^t  ^.  ^.  ^tll  pkarg 


^nrtlf  Carolina  ^tate  €oIkgc 

v.^ 


:/  .  J 


NORTH  CAROLINA  STATE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 


S00785212 


Date  Due 


This  book  is  due  on  the  date  indicated  below 
and  is  subject  to  a  fine  of  ■fNMK  CENTS  a 
day  thereafter.  ,  . 


OCT  1 4 1964 
MAYS    1967 


OCT  2  3  1986 


\ 


f^Wi 


2  9  mif 


THE   COW 


THE  OPEN  COUNTRY  BOOKS 

A 

Company    of    Genial    Little   Books    about    the 

Out-of-Doors 

Under   the   Editorship    of 

L.  H.  BAILEY 

1. 

The  Apple-Tree     .      .      .      .     L.  H.  Bailey 

2. 

A    Home    Vegetable-Garden     .     .     . 

Ella    M.    Freeman 

3. 

The  Cow     .      .      .     Jabed  van  Wagenen,  Jr. 

4. 

Vacation   on   the   Trail,  Eugene  Davenport 

m 


S  S 


c  o 
iS  S 


The  Open  Country  Books — No.  3 


THE  COW 


BY 
JARED  VAN  WAGENEN,  Jk. 


i^eto  gOCfl 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1922 

All  rights  reserved 


PEINTED  IN   THE   UNITED   STATES   OF  AMEEICA 


Ck)PTBIQHT,    1922, 

Bt  the  macmillan  company. 


Set  up  and  printed.    Published  October,  1922. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 

New  York.  U.  S.  A. 


TO 

THE  BY-GONE  MEN  OF  HILL- 
SIDE FARM  WHO  WERE  DAIRYMEN 
ACCORDING  TO  THE  LIGHT  OF 
THEIR      DAY      AND      GENERATION 


"^  141^1 


PREFACE 

This  little  book  does  not  pretend  to  be  a  text- 
book nor  a  treatise  on  dairy  husbandry,  for  there 
are  plenty  of  such  books  already.  It  is  simply  an 
effort  to  set  down  the  ideas  of  a  dairyman  concern- 
ing his  own  business  and  to  view  the  cow  as  a  very 
interesting  animal  who  after  all  these  thousands 
of  years  of  close  companionship  with  man  still  re- 
tains many  primal  instincts  and  many  hereditary 
tendencies.  So  we  may  ask  the  meaning  of  old 
winding  cow-paths  and  little  calves  hidden  in  the 
bushes  and  the  tragedy  of  the  herd  bull  condemned 
to  spend  his  days  tied  to  a  post  by  a  ring  in  his 
nose  (like  Sampson,  old  and  blind,  grinding  meal 
for  his  conquerers)  when  his  place  is  to  march 
proudly  at  the  head  of  his  obedient  herd. 

Dairying  has  grown  into  a  vast  and  complex  and 
exceedingly  modern  business,  conducted  in  great 
manufacturing  establishments  with  white  tile  and 
steam  sterilizers  and  pure  cultures  and  bacterial 
counts;  yet  there  ought  to  be  a  place  to  revive  at 
least  the  memory  of  old  farm  houses  under  great 
trees  and  herds  winding  down  the  road  at  milking- 
time,  and  farm  women  making  butter  in  cool  spring- 
houses  or  shadowy  white-washed  cellars.     Such 


viii  PREFACE 

things  were  still  within  the  memory  of  him  who 
writes,  nor  is  he  old.  And  it  is  confidently  hoped 
that  this  attempt  will  have  very  direct  and  prac- 
tical value  to  the  present-day  dairyman,  for  he 
cannot  expect  his  best  success  unless  he  has  a  real 
regard  for  his  cow  and  likes  to  read  about  her. 

Farm  butter-and-cheese-making  are  rapidly  go- 
ing the  way  of  the  farm  spinning-wheel  and  the 
loom.  Horace  Bushnell,  Connecticut  preacher  and 
author,  speaking  at  a  town  centennial  in  the 
middle  of  the  last  century  and  looking  back  on  the 
memory  of  his  youth  and  the  domestic  manufac- 
tures of  that  time,  lingeringly  and  lovingly  called 
it  the  ^^Golden  Age  of  Homespun."  The  corre- 
sponding age  of  dairying  is  about  to  go  forever,  and 
in  some  respects  the  world  will  be  the  poorer 
thereby ;  but  this  at  least  remains :  That  we  men 
who  would  farm  not  only  for  to-day  or  to-morrow 
but  for  the  generations  yet  unborn  must  have  the 
animal  as  part  of  the  farm  scheme.  Agricultural 
content  and  permanent  prosperity  are  typified  best 
not  by  a  plow  on  a  field  arable,  but  by  flocks  and 
herds  winding  over  green  pastures. 

So  this  little  volume  is  not  an  attempt  to  reduce 
cow-keeping  to  cold  demonstrations  of  chemistry 
and  physiology  and  bacteriology — and  cash — but 
rather  to  strike  the  personal  note  and  to  speak  of 
dairying  on  one  old  hill  farm  and  to  put  into  lan- 
guage a  little  of  the  glow  and  the  glamour  of  real 
farm  life.  Jared  van  Wagenen,  Jb. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     The  Kingdom  of  the  Cow 1 

II.     Concerning  the  Cow  Herself 9 

III.  The  Similitude  of  the  Cow 25 

IV.  The  Cow,  Mentally  and  Instinctively     .      .  33 

V.     Concerning  Cow-Pastures  and  Cow-Paths  .  43 

VI.     Concerning  Old  Stone  Walls  and  Cows  and 

Other  Things 61 

VII.     The  Cow  Tribes 71 

VIII.     The  Rearing  of  the  Calf 82 

IX.     The  Care  of  the  Milking  Herd    ....  89 

X.     The  Health  of  the  Herd 99 

XI.     The  Depreciation  and  the  Renewal  of  the 

Dairy  Herd 107 

XII.     The  Judging  of  Cows 116 

XIII.  The  Dairy  Farmstead 124 

XIV.  The  Construction  of  the  Dairy  Bam     .      .  133 
XV.     Concerning  Dairying  as  a  Business  .     .     .  141 


THE  COW 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THE  COW 

As  the  Pilgrim  journeys  through  the  Farm 
Country,  he  may  come  to  the  long  reaches  of  the 
great  river  where  luxuriant  plenty  broods  over  the 
land,  where  the  smooth  landscape  lies  in  checkered 
squares,  where  the  flat  grain  fields  stretch  away  to 
the  horizon  and  the  earth  yields  her  increase  to 
even  a  careless  husbandry.  In  regions  such  as 
these  are  grown  the  grains  that  figure  in  the  prod- 
uce exchanges  of  the  world.  When  the  Pilgrim 
leaves  behind  him  the  broad  stretches  of  the  fertile 
plain  and  sets  his  face  toward  the  Hill  Country,  he 
will  come  to  a  pleasant  land  where  the  brooks  run 
in  narrow  valleys  and  rocky  pasture  fields  fenced 
by  old  stone  walls  cling  to  the  slopes  of  the  hills 
and  springs  of  pure  water  bubble  up  beside  the 
road.  He  will  find  close  snuggled  in  the  elbow  of 
the  valley  old  farmsteads  under  spreading  trees, 
and  perhaps  a  row  of  shining  milk-cans  sunning 
beside  the  kitchen  door.  Then  there  will  be  big 
red  bams  with  silos,  and  on  the  alluvial  soils  along 

1 
nOi'ERTY  UBRARY 

N.  C.  Stek  CoUegt 


2  THE  COW 

the  water  course  and  climbing  a  little  way  up  the 
hills  will  be  close-turfed  luxuriant  meadows  and 
young  com  fields  shining  and  dancing  in  the 
breeze.  If  it  be  near  evening  there  will  be  merry 
children  coming  home  from  school  and  patient 
herds  with  full  udders  waiting  at  the  bars  for  milk- 
ing-time,  and  boys  coming  for  the  cows  will  call 
to  them  "Co-boss,  Co-boss,  Co-boss" — the  same  call- 
ing-cry that  English-speaking  farm  folk  have 
known  for  many  centuries.  By  these  tokens  the 
Pilgi-im  shall  know  that  he  has  come  unto  the 
Kingdom  of  the  Cow,  for  be  it  noted  that  the  cow 
comes  into  her  own  and  rules  unquestioned  only 
where  Nature  has  not  been  too  kind. 
'  So  it  will  be  best  for  us  at  the  beginning  frankly 
to  recognize  the  fact  that  most  of  us  are  dairymen 
by  force  of  circumstances.  Of  course,  every  good 
farm  is  suitable  for  cow-keeping,  but  when  we 
speak  of  a  "dairy-farm"  we  really  mean  one  which 
is  capable  of  giving  good  returns  when  used  in  this 
way,  but  which  can  hardly  be  recommended  for 
general  agriculture.  A  cursory  survey  of  the  typi- 
cal farm  scheme  of  different  localities  will  demon- 
strate the  correctness  of  the  general  statement 
that  where  lands  are  fertile,  level  and  easily  tilled 
and  climatic  conditions  are  kindly,  men  steadfastly 
refuse  to  milk  many  cows.  The  truth  is  that  we  are 
all  as  lazy  as  we  dare  to  be,  and  on  land  naturally 
fertile  and  adapted  to  the  use  of  modern  machinery 
it  is  possible  to  make  a  living  by  types  of  farming 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THE  COW  3 

that  demand  less  sustained  effort  and  skill  than 
dairying.  For  this  reason  the  typical  corn-belt 
farmer  is  not  a  dairyman,  nor  is  he  likely  to  be- 
come one.  I  am  not  sure  but  that  deep  down  in 
his  heart  he  really  despises  the  man  who  will  milk 
a  cow,  deeming  it  women's  work  or  worse.  Kather 
would  he  guide  his  three-horse  draught  team  and 
riding  plow,  laying  the  long  furrows  of  his  quar- 
ter-section, or  see  his  shocks  of  wheat  standing  like 
the  tents  of  an  army  in  orderly  array  or  lave  his 
hands  in  the  stream  of  golden  grain  as  it  pours 
from  the  threshing  machine.  Not  for  him  is  the 
cow  with  her  bovine  ways  and  the  personal  service 
and  undeviating  round  of  attention  which  she  ex- 
acts from  those  who  would  succeed  through  her. 
Yet  unconsciously  he  fills  his  place  in  our  agricul- 
tural economy,  for  some  one  must  grow  the  world's 
coarse,  cheap,  staple  crops  of  wheat  and  corn  and 
hay.  He  and  his  ilk  may  be  said  to  follow  agri- 
culture along  the  line  of  least  resistance.  His  (ex- 
cepting only  the  grazier)  is  the  type  of  farming 
that  calls  for  the  minimum  of  both  labor  and  skill. 
Under  favorable  conditions,  i.e.,  with  abundant 
fertility  and  good  markets,  it  may  yield  ample  re- 
turns and  may  accumulate  considerable  agricul- 
tural wealth,  but  if  unintelligently  followed  the 
end  is  confusion.  It  is  soil-mining  rather  than 
permanent  agriculture.  Sooner  or  later  come  fall- 
ing crop  yields,  and  with  them  social  and  economic 
decay  unless  a  system  of  purchased  plant-food  and 


4  THE  COW 

humus-maintenance  be  introduced.  In  the  past 
this  soil-miner  has  been  only  a  sojourner  in  the 
land  with  his  face  set  toward  the  new  country  of 
our  unconquered  West.  Kecently  he  and  we  have 
rather  suddenly  awakened  to  the  fact  that  there 
are  no  more  great  undiscovered  agricultural  em- 
pires in  America,  and  this  has  resulted  in  much 
writing  and  orating  and  taking  stock  of  our  agri- 
cultural resources. 

There  is  another  and  very  much  higher  type  of 
farmer  who  is  a  gardener  and  fruit-grower  rather 
than  a  dairyman.  In  localities  favored  as  to  soils 
and  market  conditions,  horticulture  has  possibili- 
ties of  production  and  profits  that  are  undreamed- 
of in  dairying.  Always,  however,  large  areas  of 
the  less  favored  lands  of  this  country  can  best  be 
utilized  in  maintaining  cows.  There  are  some  con- 
spicuous examples  of  successful  fruit-growing  on 
lands  that  do  not  readily  lend  themselves  to  gen- 
eral crop  production,  but  broadly  speaking  our 
dairy  lands  are  those  which,  on  account  of  de- 
ficient plant-food,  steepness,  presence  of  stone  or 
poor  drainage,  are  not  utilized  for  cereal  cropping 
and  at  the  same  time  have  no  horticultural  adapta- 
bility. 

Just  which  farms  and  localities  belong  to  this 
category  is  a  matter  of  individual  judgment  and 
community  experience.  Perhaps  75  per  cent  of 
New  York  and  an  even  larger  proportion  of  New 
England  farms  will  find  their  best  possibilities 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THE  COW  5 

when  used  for  dairy  purposes.  In  the  South  and 
West  the  percentage  is  smaller,  while  in  the  best 
of  the  corn-belt  country  dairying  is  usually  inci- 
dental to  other  agricultural  methods.  In  a  general 
way,  all  those  farms  in  the  East  where  pastur- 
age is  necessarily  an  important  part  of  the  scheme 
are  typical  dairy  farms.  Some  steep  and  rocky 
fields  now  used  for  pasture  properly  belong  to  the 
class  of  forest  lands.  There  are  other  areas  too 
thin  and  poor  to  be  grazed  profitably  by  milch 
cows,  which  in  large  units  might  possibly  be 
utilized  for  sheep,  especially  those  of  the  Merino 
type.  In  the  West  it  is  the  sheep  and  the  steer 
rather  than  the  cow  that  promise  the  best  use  of 
the  semi-arid  regions.  Taken  all  in  all,  the  old 
northeastern  states,  together  with  Minnesota  and 
Wisconsin,  may  fairly  be  termed  the  Kingdom  of 
the  Cow. 

Of  course,  fertility  and  topography  are  not  the 
only  factors  that  determine  the  location  of  the 
dairy  industry.  Climate,  especially  in  the  past, 
has  played  a  most  important  part.  Before  the  in- 
troduction of  artificial  refrigeration,  the  handling 
of  dairy  products  required  ice  or  at  least  cold 
spring  water  and  cold  cellars  for  storage.  These 
essential  conditions  restricted  the  industry  to  the 
North.  Even  now,  cow-keeping  has  never  attained 
any  large  place  below  Mason  and  Dixon's  line. 
This  failure  of  dairying  to  establish  itself  in  the 
South  has  a  social  as  well  as  a  climatic  signifi- 


6  THE  COW 

cance,  for  the  negro,  either  slave  or  free,  has  always 
been  the  main  dependence  for  agricultural  labor, 
and  as  a  race  they  are  perhaps  less  calculated  than 
any  other  to  bring  to  the  cow  the  intelligence  and 
systematic  attention  necessary  for  success.  In 
fact,  the  distribution  of  our  various  types  of  agri- 
culture is  in  many  ways  a  matter  of  racial  stocks. 
Up  in  some  of  the  northern  counties  of  New  York 
and  over  across  the  line  in  the  domain  of  King 
George  are  localities  where  dairying  is  supreme — 
where  we  find  Presbyterian  churches  and  spotted 
Ayrshire  cattle  and  big,  high-stepping  Clydesdale 
horses  and  strong-featured  men  with  a  burr-r-r  in 
their  speech.  These  are  Scotsmen  who  sought  a 
better  country^,  but  have  remained  most  loyal  to 
the  animals  and  the  worship  of  the  homeland.  It 
is  this  same  Scot  who  has  given  to  the  ancient 
dairy  county  of  Delaware,  in  New  York,  not  only 
stern  standards  of  living  but  also  perhaps  the  most 
highly  specialized  dairying  in  America.  Likewise 
in  the  Middle  West  and  in  Minnesota  and  Wiscon- 
sin, it  has  been  the  Dane  and  the  Hollander  and 
the  Swede,  together  with  the  emigrant  from  old 
New  England,  that  have  turned  much  of  these 
states  into  cow  pastures.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Italian  and  the  man  from  eastern  Europe  turns 
very  readily  to  horticulture.  He  trims  ^dnes  and 
grows  onions  and  potatoes  and  garden  truck,  and 
with  the  aid  of  his  mate  and  brood  cuddles  and 
caresses  the  earth  into  fruitfulness,  for  he  is  to  the 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  THE  COW  7 

manor  bom,  but  only  slowly  does  he  come  to  love 
the  cow. 

Of  course,  to  a  certain  extent,  markets  are  a 
determinative  factor  in  the  distribution  of  the 
dairy  industry.  However,  the  years  tend  to  level 
advantages  in  this  regard.  Markets  are  a  matter 
of  time  and  accessibility  rather  than  of  distance 
and  freight  rates.  Better  transportation,  together 
with  a  little  sound  dairy  bacteriology,  have  greatly 
extended  the  zone  of  market  milk  production. 
Fast  express  service  and  refrigerator  cars  have 
made  it  seem  very  simple  to  carry  milk  in  first- 
class  condition  for  many  hundred  miles.  A  short 
stretch  of  muddy  country  road  is  a  greater  handi- 
cap than  a  hundred  times  as  far  of  gleaming  steel 
rails.  Both  New  York  and  Boston  draw  their  milk 
supply  from  at  least  six  different  states.  Possibili- 
ties like  these  are  upsetting  our  old  ideas  of  market 
advantages.  This  was  not  always  so.  Orange 
County  once  deemed  that  it  had  a  natural  monop- 
oly of  the  New  York  City  milk  trade,  and  not 
so  long  ago  "up  state"  butter  went  west  to  Chica- 
go. Men  were  glad  to  believe  that  there  was  a 
mystical  something  in  the  air  or  the  water  or  the 
grass  that  would  forever  bar  the  cow  from  the 
Mississippi  Valley.  Any  hope  of  this  kind  has 
proved  but  "a  vain  thing  for  safety,"  for  the  cow 
has  constantly  found  her  way  into  farther  places. 
Nearby  markets  are  no  more  necessary  for  milk 
than  for  small-fruits  and  perishable  vegetables. 


8  THE  COW 

This  much  at  least  is  certain:  that  with  the 
years  the  Kingdom  of  the  Cow  is  a  constantly 
widening  empire.  Even  like  the  sheep  of  which 
Vergil  wrote,  she  ^'hath  a  golden  hoof."  To  some 
one-time  fertile  regions  she  comes  late,  but  she 
comes  to  save.  When  the  soil-miner  has  wrought 
his  perfect  wort  and  the  earth  no  longer  gives  her 
increase — when  seed  for  the  sower  and  bread  for 
the  eater  grow  scanty — then  the  cow  comes  to  the 
rescue.  From  the  beginning  she  has  exemplified 
the  doctrine  of  soil  conservation.  Where  she  makes 
the  land  her  own,  green  carpets  of  pasture  possess 
the  fields,  alfalfa  throws  its  perfume  to  the  breeze 
and  corn  waves  and  rustles  in  the  sunshine.  There 
great  new  barns  rise  in  place  of  the  old,  and  white- 
walled  farmsteads  speak  of  peace  and  plenty. 
There  contented  farm  folk  found  dynasties  by 
striking  the  roots  of  their  lives  deep  into  the  soil. 
"And  of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven." 


II 

CONCERNING  THE  COW  HERSELF 

There  is  somewhere  a  story  about  a  painting  in 
which  the  menagerie  is  represented  as  trooping  up 
the  gang-plank  into  the  ark  in  orderly  array,  ac- 
companied by  Noah  himself,  carefully  bearing  a 
tin  box  inscribed,  "Papers  relating  to  the  origin 
of  the  DeLevis  family."  Very  much  the  same  sort 
of  loving  service  has  been  rendered  by  the  natural- 
ist to  the  cow.  The  geologists  have  patiently  dug 
the  million-year-old  skeletons  of  her  forebears  out 
of  the  earth  and  have  christened  them  with  long 
hard  names,  and  the  zoologists  have  taken  their 
present-day  and  extinct  representatives  and  have 
referred  them  to  one  or  to  several  species,  each 
man  according  to  his  own  ideas  of  the  philosophy 
of  classification.  We  may  dip  but  lightly  into  zo- 
ology by  saying  that  all  our  domestic  cattle  are  of 
European  origin  and  perhaps  the  dominant  species, 
Bos  tauruSy  may  do  for  a  family  name.  If  we  are 
born  zoologists  rather  than  dairymen,  we  may  read 
books  with  prints  of  fossil  skeletons  and  skull 
measurements  and  discussions  of  dentition  for- 
mulae, and  may  at  least  have  the  satisfaction  of 

9 


10  THE  COW 

finding  out  that  Bos  taiirus  was  a  variable  species ; 
and  after  that  we  can  leave  the  matter  to  the  com- 
parative anatomist. 

In  the  conformation  and  the  habits  of  the  pres- 
ent-day cow  there  are  many  things  we  cannot  un- 
derstand unless  we  suppose  them  to  be  reversions 
to  something  in  the  remote  ancestry.  The  expand- 
ing science  of  genetics  may  change  our  conceptions 
of  some  of  these  matters;  yet  even  genetics  is 
based  strongly  on  the  conception  of  the  continuity 
of  heredity.  It  is  pleasant  to  conjure  the  past  and 
to  tiy  to  explain  contemporaneous  facts  on  tenden- 
cies we  assume  to  have  been  present  through  the 
long  course  of  time,  unless,  indeed,  we  can  dem- 
onstrate their  origin  now  and  then  in  modern 
nutrition  or  other  factors.  By  this  practice  of  ret- 
rospect we  endeavor  to  reconstruct  for  ourselves 
something  of  the  conditions  of  the  earth  and  of 
man  in  vast  former  time. 

For  our  purpose  let  us  rest  content  with  the 
general  statement  that  for  unknown  centuries 
and  up  until  early  historic  times,  wild  cattle 
roamed  the  forests  of  Central  and  Northern  Europe 
and  the  British  Isles,  presumably  entirely  undo- 
mesticated  and  uncontrolled.  Very  fortunately,  in 
certain  old  European  parks,  a  few  specimens  of 
these  cattle  have  been  preserved  so  that  we  may 
know  something  of  their  appearance  and  habits. 
Their  color  markings  at  least  were  peculiar.  They 
seem  to  have  been  great  brutes,  typically  white  in 


CONCERNING  THE  COW  HERSELF  11 

color,  with  brown  or  black  ears;  even  today  there 
is  an  occasional  reversion  to  the  ancestral  type. 
Solid  white  is  not  an  infrequent  color  among 
Shorthorns,  and  a  good  many  years  ago  on  Hillside 
Farm  we  came  into  possession  of  a  rather  elderly 
cow  of  dubious  quality  and  checkered  ancestry. 
She  was  even  as  the  "milk-white  bull''  on  which 
Priscilla,  bride  of  John  Alden,  rode  on  her  wed- 
ding day,  but  her  ears  were  brown.  I  used  to  say 
to  myself  and  her:  "Old  cow,  you  are  the  heir  of 
all  the  ages.  Your  ancestral  story  goes  back  and 
links  with  the  days  when  Abraham  drove  forth 
his  herds  from  Ur  of  the  Chaldees  and  Job's  sheep 
lay  sick  in  the  land  of  Uz,  and  drowsing  shepherds 
watched  their  flocks  beneath  the  stars  on  the  plains 
of  Shinar.  In  you  there  may  be  the  blood  of  fa- 
mous Shorthorn  sires  and  the  blood  of  dairy 
queens.  It  may  be  a  thousand  generations  ago  some 
far-ofe  savage  men  had  first  dominion  over  you. 
Your  characters  have  been  buried  beneath  the  accu- 
mulated mass  piled  up  by  many  masters  and  chang- 
ing environment,  yet  once  again,  like  the  geologic 
outcrop  of  burled  strata,  that  long  forgotten  color 
of  the  wild  ox  has  reappeared  in  you." 

This  white  cow  with  her  brown  ears  was  a  truly 
remarkable  example  of  color  reversion  such  as 
would  not  appear  once  in  many  thousand  times, 
but  many  cattle  show  dark  patches  inside  the  ears 
which  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  a  tendency  to  hark 
back  to  primitive  coloring.     We  forget,  perhaps, 


12  THE  COW 

how  almost  infinitely  long  is  the  history  of  the  do- 
mestication of  animals.  Indeed,  in  the  case  of 
cattle,  so  far  as  exact  names  and  dates  and  opera- 
tions are  concerned,  there  is  very  little  before  the 
great  Thomas  Bake  well  and  contemporary  breeders 
less  than  two  centuries  ago,  but  its  beginnings  go 
back  before  our  books  and  beyond  tradition  and 
even  beyond  the  days  when  were  accumulated  the 
mounds  of  refuse  in  front  of  the  cave-man's  door. 

We  are  fond  of  dwelling  on  the  great  gulf  that 
separates  our  excellent  dairy  cow  from  her  forest- 
roaming  ancestor,  and  it  is  all  true,  yet,  after  all, 
the  veneer  of  domestication — or  shall  we  call  it 
civilization — is  very  thin.  The  cow,  as  also  man, 
is  still  an  animal  of  many  primitive  impulses  and 
hereditary  memories.  So  long  as  she  is  undis- 
turbed, she  seems  very  much  a  creature  of  habit. 
As  Isaiah  long  ago  wrote,  "The  ass  knoweth  his 
owner  and  the  ox  his  master's  crib."  She  stands 
patiently  at  the  pasture  bars  and  answers  the  call 
of  her  owner  and  does  violence  to  all  the  instincts 
of  her  motherhood  by  unresistingly  offering  her 
udder  to  the  hand  of  her  milker,  yet  in  time  of 
stress  she  seems  very  quickly  to  fall  back  into  her 
primitive  wildness. 

I  have  repeatedly  seen  young  heifers  turned  into 
a  back  pasture  for  the  summer  who,  owing  to  lack 
of  attention  and  contact  with  man,  have  "gone 
wild"  and  in  a  few  months  have  forgotten  all  the 


CONCERNING  THE  COW  HERSELF  13 

external  evidences  of  domestication.  The  heifer 
that  in  spring  was  so  much  a  part  of  the  bam 
family  that  she  could  hardly  be  made  to  step  out 
of  your  path  and  that  would  follow  like  a  dog 
with  the  hope  of  a  word  and  a  lick  of  salt,  is, 
capable  of  apparently  forgetting  in  a  few  weeks 
her  age-long  training  and  contact  with  man.  I 
have  seen  them  sniffing  the  breeze  with  elevated 
head  and  distended  nostril  and  flickering  ears,  and 
at  sight  of  their  one-time  master  bounding  wildly 
away  through  thickets  and  over  fences,  nor  hesi- 
tating, if  cornered,  to  turn  and  fiercely  fight  him 
who  under  normal  conditions  they  fully  recognized 
both  as  master  and  protector.  Once  having  re- 
verted to  this  condition,  they  will  keep  to  the 
woods  by  day  and  feed  by  night,  and  can  be  re- 
claimed only  by  the  art  of  the  trapper  or  even  the 
hunter.  Yet  if  brought  to  bay  and  established 
under  the  care  of  man,  the  domestication  of  cen- 
turies promptly  reasserts  itself  and  the  old  de- 
pendence on  man  and  trust  in  him  comes  back 
completely. 

It  ought  to  be  said  in  passing  that  in  this  respect 
at  least,  the  domestication  of  sheep  seems  much 
more  complete  than  that  of  cattle.  Sheep  seem  to 
have  more  of  dependence  and  something  allied  to 
affection.  They  learn  to  answer  to  a  calling-cry 
much  better  than  cattle  and  to  follow  and  obey  to 
a  greater  extent.     I  have  never  known  sheep,  no 


14:  THE  COW 

matter  how  long  neglected,  to  fail  to  welcome  the 
coming  of  the  master  by  crowding  around  him  with 
long  bleating  of  welcome. 

So,  too,  we  must  not  blame  the  bull  because  he 
is  sometimes  sullen  and  often  wild  and  dangerous, 
for  after  all,  he  is  merely  true  to  the  instincts  by 
virtue  of  which  he  went  lowing  at  the  head  of  his 
band  of  females  and  fought  off  his  rivals  and  held 
his  place  only  by  the  ordeal  of  combat.  The  life 
we  condemn  him  to  lead  is  itself  the  tragedy  of  the 
farm  world,  and  as  he  stands  wearing  out  his 
years  in  solitude  and  loneliness,  chained  by  his 
nose  in  a  darkened  stall,  I  wonder  does  he  ever 
have  flashes  of  hereditary  memory  or  tantalizing 
dreams  of  a  far-off  time  when  he  stalked  the  wood- 
land at  the  head  of  his  herd,  master  of  all  he  met, 
and  the  valleys  echoed  to  his  roar  and  the  earth 
trembled  to  his  battle  charge?  May  we  not  fairly 
assume  that  the  fierceness  of  bulls  is  now  the  com- 
paratively feeble  survival  of  a  once  most  vital  but 
now  long  disused  character,  which  we  may  sup- 
pose is  slowly  dying  as  the  generations  pass?  We 
must  not  blame  him  for  what  he  cannot  help.  He 
may  never  be  a  playfellow  for  our  children,  and 
we  must  always  consider  him  as  a  potentially  dan- 
gerous brute  whose  pent-up  instincts  may  suddenly 
flame  forth  in  uncontrollable  fury;  yet  even  the 
bull  is  not  insensible  to  the  power  of  kindness  and 
we  must  use  him  with  gentleness,  remembering 
what  his  nature  bids  him  be. 


CONCEENING  THE  COW  HEESELF  15 

Doubtless  it  is  true  that  with  the  progress  of 
domestication  our  animals,  even  as  man  himself, 
are  leaving  behind  them  many  characters  which 
were  once  supremely  vital,  but  under  changed  en- 
vironment are  first  disused  and  then  forgotten. 
A  number  of  such  questions  are  connected  with 
baby  calves  and  bovine  motherhood. 

Unquestionably  there  was  a  time  when  the  cow 
brought  forth  her  young  only  in  the  spring,  merely 
because  it  was  then  that  the  weather  was  warm 
and  the  grass  green  and  abundant,  and  hence  the 
calf  born  then  stood  the  best  chance  of  survival; 
and  so  by  the  stern  law  of  biology,  this  spring-time 
birth  became  a  firmly  fixed  character  of  the  cow, 
ingrained  into  her  very  constitution  through  long 
centuries.  But  when  cattle  come  to  be  kept  under 
the  entirely  artificial  conditions  of  regular  care 
and  certain  shelter  and  assured  food  supply  at  all 
seasons,  this  spring-time  birth  habit  ceased  to  be 
advantageous  and  has  been  largely  lost,  although 
it  seems  that  even  now  the  birth  time  tends  to 
coincide  with  the  ascending  sun. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  has  been  noted,  sheep  seem 
in  some  ways  to  be  more  truly  domesticated  than 
cattle,  but  so  far  as  the  lambing  time  is  concerned, 
they  obey  ancestral  habits  more  closely  than  the 
cow.  The  mating  instinct  in  sheep  lies  practic- 
ally dormant  during  the  summer  months,  arousing 
only  when  the  cool  autumn  nights  come  on;  and 
so  the  normal  lamb  is  born  with  the  coming  of 


16  THE  COW 

spring  sunshine.  The  rearing  of  the  so-called  "hot- 
house lamb"  makes  it  most  desirable  to  have  the 
young  dropped  in  the  early  winter;  but  in  this, 
with  eyevj  effort,  only  partial  success  is  possible. 
The  same  spring-tide  reproduction  is  noted  in  poul- 
try, for  egg-laying  practically  ceases  in  the  three 
months  farthest  removed  from  April  and  May; 
and  the  wild  fauna  of  our  fields  and  woods  render 
almost  perfect  obedience  to  this  same  law.  The 
fact  that  the  cow  and  the  horse  have  largely 
forgotten  this  ancestral  trait  bears  testimony 
to  the  vast  period  of  time  which  must  have  elapsed 
since  they  became  subject  to  the  control  of  man. 

Other  phenomena  connected  with  maternity  are 
being  modified  with  the  generations.  For  example, 
in  those  breeds  of  fowls  in  which  the  egg-laying 
tendency  is  most  highly  developed,  the  instinct 
of  the  female  to  sit  upon  the  eggs  to  incubate  them 
is  surely  far  weaker  than  once  it  was  and  has  be- 
come most  uncertain  and  capricious.  Doubtless 
there  was  a  far-off  time  when  the  cow  guarded  her 
young  calf  most  jealously  and,  if  necessary,  fought 
off  the  wolf  and  bear,  with  lowering  head  and 
flashing  horns,  although  she  does  not,  like  the 
horse,  use  her  hoofs  in  combat.  But  of  this  old 
mother  instinct  only  the  rudiments  are  left. 

To  the  dairy^  cow  of  today,  the  birth  of  a  calf 
is  an  incident  rather  than  an  event.  She  seems  to 
reason  that  it  will  be  well  taken  care  of  anyway 
without  any  particular  attention  on  her  part.    On 


CONCERNING  THE  COW  HERSELF  17 

the  whole,  she  obeys  certain  instincts,  but  obeys 
them  feebly.  If  at  pasture,  she  will  commonly 
choose  an  isolated  or  partially  concealed  spot 
where  her  calf  will  be  born,  but  she  is  likely  to  be 
surprisingly  careless  about  it  afterwards.  I  have 
seen  more  than  one  cow  so  lost  to  the  sense  of  duty 
that  she  absolutely  refused  to  grant  her  offspring 
its  first  meal.  However,  the  manifestation  of 
mother-love  varies  greatly  in  different  individuals. 
There  are  some  cows,  who  are,  to  use  a  barn  phrase, 
'^crazy  for  their  calf,"  but  this  is  the  exceptional 
animal.  Many  cows  trouble  themselves  very  little 
about  it.  The  idea  of  a  cow  mourning  for  her  calf 
like  ^^Rachel  weeping  for  her  children  and  will  not 
be  comforted  because  they  are  not,"  is  a  pretty  bit 
of  fiction  which  is  hardly  borne  out  by  the  facts. 
In  most  cases,  the  cow,  given  her  choice  between 
her  calf  and  a  feed  of  silage,  will  basely  take  the 
silage. 

There  is  one  strange  bovine  habit,  however,  that 
at  least  gives  ground  for  surmises.  Many,  per- 
haps most  cows,  will,  on  the  birth  of  a  calf,  devour 
the  fetal  membranes,  a  procedure  surely  utterly 
at  variance  with  her  usual  ideas  of  diet.  There  is 
really  no  rational  explanation  for  this  most  as- 
tonishing practice  unless  we  assume  that  the  prim- 
itive cow  did  this  in  order  that  it  might  not  at- 
tract the  beast  of  prey  and  so  reveal  the  location 
of  her  calf.  If  so,  does  the  mother  cow,  standing 
at  ease  and  safety  in  a  box-stall,  respond  to  some 


18  THE  COW 

dim  hereditary  memory  of  what  her  own  ancestor 
did  a  thousand  and  more  generations  before?  Or, 
may  modem  science  find  that  this  unusual  diet 
supplies  some  need  of  the  bovine  body  at  this  par- 
ticular moment? 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  young  calf  exhibits  more 
of  the  primal  instincts  of  the  wild  than  does  the 
mother.  Under  native  conditions,  it  must  have 
been  some  days  after  birth  before  it  began  to  run 
by  its  mother's  side  with  the  remainder  of  the  herd, 
and  during  this  period  if  there  was  any  one  idea 
that  was  firmly  stamped  into  its  little  bovine  brain, 
it  must  have  been  never,  never  to  betray  its  pres- 
ence by  movement  or  voice.  So  in  obedience  to 
this  training,  the  baby  calf  will  lie  quietly  for  a 
very  long  period  unless  aroused  by  its  mother.  I 
do  not  know  how  long  the  calf  would  remain  quiet 
and  I  certainly  have  never  had  the  heart  to  try.  It 
will  often  lie  for  twenty-four  hours  and  probably 
much  longer.  I  doubt  not  that  the  youngster  gets 
very  hungry  and  possibly  lonely,  but  it  does  not 
forget  its  hereditary  training.  Stoical  philosopher 
that  it  is,  it  curls  up,  pokes  its  soft  little  nose  into 
its  furry  flank  and  tries  to  sleep  the  hours  away 
until  mother  shall  come  and  give  the  glad  signal 
that  everything  is  well. 

Very  frequently  I  have  gone  to  give  the  young- 
ster its  first  lesson  in  drinking,  and  have  found 
him  so  sleepy  and  suspicious  of  my  well-meant  at- 
tentions that  I  could  not  arouse  any  interest  in 


u 

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CONCERmNG  THE  COW  HERSELF  19 

getting  his  first  meal  out  of  a  tin  pail,  yet  the  com- 
ing of  the  mother  with  just  a  low  mother-call  or  a 
caressing  touch  of  her  tongue  would  almost  in- 
stantly find  the  calf  alert  and  ready  for  a  meal 
from  her  udder.  The  lamb  seems  to  look  out  on 
this  cold  world  with  different  vision,  and  if  long 
neglected  by  its  mother  announces  the  fact  to 
everybody  by  piteous  baby  cries  or  bleating. 

It  seems  remarkable  that  the  new-born  calf  con- 
trives to  nurse  as  quickly  as  it  does.  Usually 
within  an  hour  or  two  after  birth,  with  wide  un- 
seeing eyes  and  wobbly  uncertain  footsteps,  he 
staggers  against  his  mother  and  promptly  finds  his 
way  to  her  full  udder.  Of  course,  under  modem 
dairy  conditions,  the  calf  is  allowed  to  nurse  in 
nature's  way  for  only  a  day  or  two  at  longest  and 
then  is  suddenly  and  rudely  snatched  from  the 
maternal  fount  forever  and  compelled  to  take  his 
meals  out  of  a  bucket  supplied  by  a  man  in  over- 
alls. The  greatest  wonder  is  how  rapidly  he  man- 
ages to  accommodate  himself  to  changed  condi- 
tions. For  untold  generations  the  calf  has  learned 
to  look  up  and  search  when  it  is  hungry.  We  com- 
pel him  to  do  the  diametrically  opposite  thing,  to 
look  down  and  drink  with  its  nose  at  the  level  of 
its  feet.  No  wonder  we  think  it  stupid  and  some- 
times lose  our  temper,  yet  generally  from  three 
to  six  tactful  lessons  will  suffice  to  establish  the 
new  habit.  It  is  commonly  said  that  the  calves  of 
our    special    dairy    breeds   learn    to    drink    more 


20  THE  COW 

readily  than  the  beef  breeds,  which  is  what  we 
would  expect,  for  the  former  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  this  mode  of  infantile  feeding  for  many 
generations. 

The  dairy  cow  today  is  so  completely  a  creature 
of  artificial  environment  and  acquired  habits  that 
we  can  only  guess  how"  the  calf  and  its  mother 
fared  in  the  old  days.  Doubtless  she  nourished 
him  and  guided  him  and,  if  necessary,  fought  for 
him  the  first  summer,  and  by  autumn  he  was  a 
lusty  thick-haired  youngster.  Then  as  the  time 
of  her  next  calf  drew  near,  her  udder  ceased  to 
yield  anything  to  him.  Her  mind  was  filled  with 
plans  for  the  new  baby,  and  he  straightway  thank- 
lessly forgot  her  and  drifted  away  to  frolic  or 
strive  with  his  kind.  On  the  modern  dairy  farm, 
the  calf's  ideal  of  a  mother  is  typified  by  a  herds- 
man with  a  bucket  of  skim-milk,  while  the  material 
affections  and  instincts  of  the  cow  go  out  to  a 
man  with  a  tin  pail  and  a  three-legged  milking 
stool ;  and  that  is  why  family  ties  grow  lax  in  the 
dairy  world. 

Both  historical  evidence  and  climatic  adapta- 
bility point  to  the  fact  that  the  cow  is  a  native  of 
temperate  or  cold  regions.  She  is  apparently  not 
at  home  in  the  tropics,  and  even  in  our  South  At- 
lantic states  she  tends  to  diminish  in  size  and  vigor, 
although  this  is  possibly  due  to  deficient  food 
supply  and  the  scourge  of  the  Texas  cattle  tick 
rather  than  mere  questions  of  temperature.    With 


CONCERNING  THE  COW  HERSELF  21 

winter  protection  she  does  remarkably  well  in  very 
severe  climates,  and  the  well-fed  steer  thrives  and 
enjoys  himself  in  the  open  in  temperatures  below 
zero.  It  has  been  noted,  however,  that,  unlike 
sheep,  cattle  do  not  dig  or  paw  away  the  snow  to 
get  at  the  grass  beneath,  and  this  would  indicate 
that  the  cradle  of  the  race  was  not  habitually  snow- 
covered  in  the  winter.  On  the  other  hand,  like 
deer,  the  cow  readily  browses  the  young  twigs  of 
trees  when  grass  is  scanty. 

We  can  only  guess  concerning  the  history  of  her 
domestication.  There  was  surely  a  time  when  she 
roamed  the  woodlands  and  knew  not  the  restraint 
or  the  protection  of  the  hand  of  man.  The  cave- 
man snared  or  trapped  her  and  gorged  himself  on 
her  abundant  flesh,  and  with  a  sharp  stone  stripped 
off  her  skin  and  shaped  it  into  a  rude  covering 
against  the  cold.  The  human  slowly  and  labori- 
ously struggled  up  toward  fore-thought,  thrift  and 
civilization,  and  one  day  a  wise  old  savage  and 
philosopher  of  the  tribe  made  an  infinite  advance 
when  he  said,  "Would  it  not  be  better  to  capture 
and  tame  some  of  these  fine  beasts  and  from  them 
rear  others  in  order  that  we  may  have  them  al- 
ways at  hand  for  food  and  skins  instead  of  depend- 
ing on  the  uncertain  chances  of  the  chase?"  and 
that   day   the   first   Animal    Husbandman    arose. 

And  another  time  some  great  thinker  of  the  clan 
observed  that  some  of  his  increasing  herd  served 
his  purpose  better  than  others  because  of  size  or 


23  THE  COW 

vigor  or  perhaps  because  of  color  markings  that  he 
fancied,  and  he  i^easoned,  "May  I  not  kill  the  calves 
of  the  cows  that  please  me  least  and  presei^ve  the 
calves  of  those  that  I  like  best  and  thus  improve 
them  all?''  and  that  day  the  first  Breeder  stood 
forth  and  systematic  improvement  was  begun. 
And  then  again,  when  the  mother  of  a  tiny  human 
babe  had  died — killed  perhaps  in  a  savage  foray 
by  a  neighboring  clan — the  bereaved  father  in  his 
helplessness  and  tenderness  bethought  himself  of 
drawing  milk  from  a  female  of  his  herd  and  thus 
preserving  the  life  of  his  child,  and  that  resource- 
ful father  became  the  first  Dairj^man.  Advances  of 
this  kind  once  made  were  never  lost. 

There  is  every  reason  to  think  that  the  genus 
Bos  readily  yields  itself  to  domestication.  We 
must  remember  that  domestication  means  far  more 
than  mere  training.  The  animals  of  a  menagerie 
may  be  tamed  and  look  to  man  for  food  and  may 
be  taught  certain  habits  and  tricks,  but  they  can 
hardly  be  called  domesticated.  The  real  test  of 
domestication  is  the  free  reproduction  of  young 
under  the  changed  conditions,  and  few  animals 
when  kept  under  artificial  confinement  will  meet 
this  test.  Not  only  this,  but  the  way  in  which 
oxen  are  readily  broken  as  beasts  of  burden  show 
how  completely  their  impulses  have  become  sub- 
servient to  the  will  of  man. 

In  any  case,  the  written  history  of  the  cow  is 
very  short  as  compared  with  her  unknown  past. 


CONCERNING  THE  COW  HERSELF  23 

The  story  of  her  domestication,  if  we  knew  it, 
would  be  that  of  the  race.  The  tale  of  her  con- 
quest begins  when  man  first  emerged  from  a  wan- 
dering hunter  into  a  pastoralist  and  began  to  build 
circular  or  mud  huts  beside  the  water-courses. 
Before  recorded  history,  the  domesticated  cow  ex- 
isted, and  the  earliest  books  of  the  Old  Testament 
— those  that  speak  to  us  concerning  the  child  his- 
tory of  the  race — are  musical  with  the  bleating  of 
sheep  and  the  lowing  of  cattle  and  the  tinkling  of 
the  bells  of  the  camels.  The  domestication  of  ani- 
mals and  man's  struggle  out  of  savagery  went  on 
side  by  side,  because  only  after  he  had  acquired 
beasts  of  burden  that  could  draw  the  plow  or 
move  objects  that  were  beyond  his  strength  was 
it  possible  to  make  any  progress  in  agriculture  or 
permanent  architecture. 

The  observant  farmer-naturalist  of  the  future 
will  have  new  problems  to  challenge  him,  if  he  lives 
in  warm-temperate  and  hot  countries,  because  of 
the  introduction  of  a  very  different  strain  of  blood 
in  recent  years.  This  strain  is  the  zebu  or  Bos 
indicuSj  the  sacred  cow  of  India.  The  zebu  is  intro- 
duced with  the  hope  that  crosses  with  common 
cattle  will  better  adapt  the  animals  to  warm  cli- 
mates and  diseases.  One  sometimes  sees  the  marks 
of  such  crosses  in  the  lighter  color,  lopping  ears, 
heavy  hanging  dewlaps,  recurving  horns,  hump 
over  the  shoulders,  and  the  very  different  eyes. 
What  permanent  effect   these  introductions  will 


24  THE  COW 

have  we  do  not  yet  know;  and  what  traits  of 
ancient  ancestry  may  come  from  the  oriental  coun- 
tries will  be  an  interesting  observation  for  future 
generations  to  make. 

When  some  day  a  great  artist  shall  worthily 
idealize  on  canvas  the  epic  story  of  the  American 
pioneer  as  he  lays  the  foundations  of  civilization 
in  the  wilderness,  his  trusty  animal  co-laborers  and 
messengers  in  the  task  will  be  pictured  not  as  pranc- 
ing steeds,  champing  the  bit  with  distended  nostril 
and  flashing  eye — such  as  Ulysses  had  at  the  siege 
of  Troy — but  they  will  be  great  beasts  with  placid 
eyes  and  mighty  shoulders  and  heaving  flank  and 
wide-spreading  horns,  the  glorious  ox-team. 

A  drowsy  cow  beside  the  bars  again 
Patiently  waiting  for  the  herdsman's  call 
With  dim  and  far-off  memories  in  her  brain, — 
What  would  she  say  if  she  could  tell  them  all  ? 

Comes  to  her  visions  of  an  ancient  past 
Before  man's  yoke  upon  her  neck  was  laid 
When  thundering  down  aisles  of  forests  vast 
She  made  one  of  a  sweeping  cavalcade? 

Can  she  feel  honor  that  she  holds  such  place 
In  the  world's  need  that  unto  her  it  clings  ? 
The  burden  bearer  of  the  human  race, 
The  foster  mother  of  its  proudest  kings. 

The  twilight  comes — fades  from  the  sky  the  light. 
Low  in  the  west  the  star  of  evening  swings 
And  couched  in  fragrant  pastures  through  the  night, — 
I  wonder  if  she  muses  on  these  things? 

ffOKUTT  uabun 


Ill 

THE  SIMILITUDE  OF  THE  COW 

Some  years  ago  one  of  the  educational  institu- 
tions, in  furthering  its  nature-study  work,  asked 
the  school  children  to  draw  an  outline  picture  of  a 
cow.  One  pupil  in  New  York  City  sent  in  a  sketch 
— certainly  original — showing  a  cow  with  udder 
extending  from  the  hind  legs  to  the  forelegs.  I 
suppose  the  youngster  had  taken  the  pattern  from 
the  good  old  text-book  picture  of  Romulus  and 
Remus  suckled  by  the  she-wolf;  but  the  child  had 
never  known  a  cow,  perhaps  had  never  seen  one. 
His  experience  of  country  things  was  much  like 
that  of  another  pupil  in  the  same  city  who  thought 
clover  was  part  of  a  box  because  a  certain  article 
of  food  had  come  into  his  home  in  a  container  with 
a  clover-leaf  brand.  We  who  live  in  the  open  fields 
little  realize  what  crude  mental  pictures  of  animals 
and  plants  lie  in  the  minds  of  thousands  of  our 
people. 

Note  the  cow  lying  down.  Her  fore  feet  fold 
back  under  the  body ;  her  hind  feet  project  forward 
but  are  not  covered;  her  body  is  not  flat  on  the 
ground,  but  tilted  over  to  one  side,  the  hind  quar- 

25 


26  THE  COW 

ters  lower  and  flatter,  the  front  quarters  usually 
more  erect,  the  head  generally  elevated  above  the 
line  of  the  shoulders,  with  variations  as  noted  in 
Chapter  IV. 

When  she  gets  up  she  lifts  her  forequarters  on 
the  elbows,  then  places  her  hind  feet  on  the  ground 
and  elevates  the  rear  quarters,  then  brings  up  the 
fore  parts  to  full  stature.  She  stretches  herself 
taut,  lowering  her  head  in  the  process,  whisks  her 
tail  to  one  side,  and  is  ready  for  any  new  event. 
The  horse  arises  by  getting  up  directly  on  his  front 
hoofs,  then  raising  the  hind  quarters. 

Once  before  you,  the  cow  is  a  ponderous  bulky 
beast,  the  very  mass  of  her — if  she  is  of  the  big 
breeds — striking  fear  into  the  minds  of  the  timid 
as  they  see  her  rise.  She  seems  to  shake  the 
ground.  The  huge  bulk  conveys  an  impression  of 
angularity, — a  massive  rectangle  with  projecting 
prominences  at  the  hips  and  above  the  front  legs, 
thick  neck  supporting  an  elongated  head  carried, 
when  in  resting  position,  in  an  upward  direction. 
The  front  legs  stand  straight  and  post-like  under 
the  weight  of  front  body  and  head,  about  equal  in 
length  to  the  vertical  width  of  the  carcass ;  but  the 
fe'et  stand  obliquely  downward  and  forward  from 
the  legs,  bearing  the  weight  by  strength  of  liga- 
ments rather  than  by  direct  impact,  making  the 
support  to  look  indirect  and  insecure.  The  hind 
legs  do  not  have  the  post-like  effect.  They  are 
placed  well  toward  the  end  of  the  rectangle;  the 


THE  SIMILITUDE  OF  THE  COW  27 

bones  present  a  series  of  angles,  and  the  hock  or 
joint  points  backward;  the  feet  are  set  obliquely, 
as  in  front.  But  while  the  support  appears  to  be 
insecure — an  appearance  that  is  much  accentuated 
when  the  skeleton  is  in  view — the  series  of  angles 
and  indirections  provide  for  movement  in  all  direc- 
tions and  great  elasticity  of  stride.  The  hoofs  are 
two-parted,  carrying  forward  the  line  of  the  lower 
leg  and  fetlock,  and  make  the  characteristic  double 
footprint.  The  tail  hangs  straight  from  the  top  of 
the  hip,  continuing  the  extension  of  the  backbone, 
with  the  fly-brush  comprising  the  lower  half;  it  is 
well  provided  with  muscles  and  is  capable  of  mak- 
ing a  quick  and  powerful  sweep. 

In  general,  the  back  presents  a  straight  line 
from  hip  to  shoulder,  often  with  a  downward  curva- 
ture ;  the  line  rises  slightly  over  the  shoulders,  and 
then  takes  a  downward  and  upward  curve  to  the 
poll  of  the  head.  The  lower  line  of  the  body  pre- 
sents a  graceful  upward  curve  at  the  rear,  disclos- 
ing the  udder;  thence  there  is  nearly  a  straight 
course  to  the  front  legs;  and  beyond  and  be- 
tween the  legs  extends  the  brisket,  like  the  prow 
of  a  ship,  following  upward  into  the  folds  of 
the  soft  dewlap  that  depends  from  the  neck. 
The  most  graceful  part  of  the  animal  is  the 
upper  neck,  attractive  in  conformation,  flexible, 
soft  and  pleasant  to  the  feel;  it  is  about  the  neck 
that  one  wants  to  throw  the  arm,  for  a  cow  re- 
sponds to  affection. 


28  THE  COW 

The  cow  and  the  horse  have  different  methods 
of  accomplishing  the  same  end.  The  horse  must 
not  be  allowed  to  fill  himself  with  water  after  a 
long  hot  day  in  the  fields  lest  he  get  indigestion, 
but  the  over-heated  ox  refuses  water  until  cooled 
off. 

Both  animals  have  specially  adapted  organs  for 
grazing  but  quite  unlike.  The  cow  has  thick  and 
relatively  immovable  lips,  but  she  has  a  tongue 
which  she  can  protrude  far  out  of  her  mouth  and 
she  uses  this  as  a  sort  of  sweeping  organ  to  grasp 
and  gather  the  grass  and  pull  it  into  her  mouth. 
She  can  use  it  as  skillfully  and  daintily  as  an 
elephant  uses  his  trunk.  The  tongue  of  the  horse 
has  no  special  adaptability  in  this  regard  but  he 
is  furnished  with  a  prehensile  upper  lip  that  is  a 
marvel  of  sensitiveness  and  delicacy  and  that  per- 
mits him  to  pick  up  and  bring  to  the  mouth  single 
kernels  of  grain  in  a  way  that  seems  almost  in- 
credible. Cows  have  front  teeth  on  the  lower  jaw 
only  with  a  tough  cartilagenous  pad  above;  in 
grazing  their  food  is  torn  or  pulled  off  rather  than 
bitten  off.  The  cow  does  this  by  seizing  the  grass 
and  then  pulling  it  off  by  a  forward  motion  of  the 
head,  that  is,  she  "eats  away  from  her  self,"  while 
the  horse  grazes  by  a  backward  pull — eats  "toward 
himself." 

Cattle  eat  rapidly  and  swallow  the  food  with 
little  chewing,  relying  mainly  on  subsequent  mas- 
tication.   As  soon  as  she  is  satisfactorily  filled  and 


THE  SIMILITUDE  OF  THE  COW  29 

can  find  time  for  solid  comfort  and  contemplation, 
the  cow  regurgitates  the  food  and  each  bolus  or 
"cud''  is  thoroughly  rechewed  and  ground,  several 
hours  of  each  day  being  given  up  to  this  (for  her) 
very  pleasant  task.  Each  "cud"  is  commonly  given 
from  fifty  to  seventy  strokes  of  the  teeth  before  it  is 
swallowed  and  replaced  by  a  new  portion.  Calves 
chew  more  rapidly  than  older  animals.  The  cow 
that  is  seriously  sick  ceases  to  ruminate  and  if  she 
again  "finds  her  cud"  it  is  joyfully  hailed  by  her 
owner  as  an  evidence  of  returning  health.  An  in- 
teresting comment  on  how  late  ignorance  and  su- 
perstition linger  among  us  is  the  fact  that  a  genera- 
tion ago  many  cow-keepers  believed  that  the  cud 
was  a  definite  something — a  sort  of  personal  pos- 
session belonging  to  a  cow  and  that  if  she  was  so 
unfortunate  as  to  "lose"  it  she  must  have  some  spe- 
cial help  to  replace  it.  Many  weird  combinations — 
a  hunk  of  fat,  salt  pork  being  one  of  the  most  ap- 
proved— were  forced  down  the  throat  of  sick  cows 
in  a  well  meant  effort  to  supply  this  particular 
need.  Not  only  "loss  of  cud"  but  "wolf-in-the-tail" 
and  "hollow-horn"  were  classic  ailments  of  the  old- 
time  quack  cow  doctor.  For  "hollow-horn"  he 
bored  a  hole  in  the  horn  with  a  gimlet  and  poured 
in  turpentine.  If  the  miserable  cow  died,  he  cut 
off  her  horn  for  the  satisfaction  of  the  owner  and, 
lo,  it  was  hollow!  an  incontestible  proof  of  the 
correctness  of  his  diagnosis.  This  may  sound  like 
fanciful  invention  or  a  tale  of  the  Dark  Ages,  but 


30  THE  COW 

it  was  established  veterinary  procedure  within  the 
memory  of  living  men. 

The  normal  udder  of  the  cow  has  four  teats  as 
compared  with  two  teats  in  the  mare  and  sheep 
and  twelve  to  sixteen  in  the  sow.  However,  it  is 
not  at  all  uncommon  to  find  two  smaller  additional 
or  supernumerary  teats  and  these  have  frequently 
been  regarded  as  an  evidence  of  special  dairy  excel- 
lence, but  they  detract  from  the  appearance  of  the 
udder  and  many  breeders  make  it  a  rule  to  cut 
them  off  as  soon  as  noted  in  the  calf. 

Twins  among  cattle  are  exceedingly  rare. 
Within  the  memory  of  the  writer  there  have  been 
more  than  a  thousand  calves  born  on  Hillside 
Farm,  and  among  all  these  only  one  pair  of  twins ; 
but  probably  twins  are  rather  more  usual  than 
would  be  indicated  by  this  particular  experience. 
When  one  twin  is'  a  bull  and  the  other  a  heifer,  the 
latter  is  called  a  "free-martin"  and  there  is  a  very 
old  and  persitent  notion  that  she  will  prove  barren. 
This  is  not  what  we  would  expect  if  reasoning  from 
analogy,  but  the  idea  is  widely  accepted  and  two 
trustworthy  men  have  assured  me  they  have  tried 
it  out  and  that  the  popular  belief  is  correct.  Twins 
among  horses  are  the  rarest  possible  occurrence 
and  horsemen  aver  that  they  never  survive.  On  the 
other  hand,  among  sheep,  especially  some  breeds, 
twins  are  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  while 
triplets  are  not  rare.  Piggies  come  into  the  world 
all  the  way  from  one  up  to  twenty  or  more,  and 


THE  SIMILITUDE  OF  THE  COW  31 

wise  old  mothers  often  manage  to  raise  in  excess 
of  a  dozen. 

It  is  a  surprising  fact  that  while  so  far  as  we 
know  the  wild  cow  was  homed  and  the  whole  genus 
(Bos)  bears  horns,  yet  we  have  long  had  well  de- 
fined races  of  hornless  or  polled  cattle.  The  truth 
seems  to  be  that  hornless  sports  (^^mooleys"  in  the 
farm  vernacular)  appear  from  time  to  time  among 
all  breeds  and  these  show  a  strong  tendency  to 
reproduce  the  same  condition  in  their  offspring. 
The  establishment  within  a  few  years  of  a  herd- 
book  for  Polled  Jerseys  and  also  for  Polled 
Durhams  or  Shorthorns  indicates  that  it  is  not 
especially  difficult  to  fix  this  variation  when  it 
appears.  The  prepotency  of  the  polled  breeds  is 
very  strong  and  the  offspring  of  the  first  cross  with 
homed  breeds  will  be  hornless  in  most  cases. 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  dairyman  the  pres- 
ence of  horns  is  an  unmitigated  nuisance,  so  much 
so  that  the  dehorning  of  cows  has  be<?ome  a  very 
common  custom.  The  animal  is  fastened  securely 
and  the  horns  removed  with  a  thin  small-toothed 
stiff -backed  saw,  taking  care  to  make  the  cut  close 
enough  to  take  a  little  circle  of  skin  with  it  in 
order  that  there  may  be  no  further  growth  of  the 
stub.  The  horn  is  hollow,  and  the  operation  is  not 
so  laborious  as  it  sounds.  This  method  makes  a 
less  serious  wound  than  that  caused  by  the  use  of 
the  clippers.  Doubtless  it  is  a  very  painful  opera- 
tion, but  it  is  kindness  in  the  end  and  our  New 


32  THE  COW 

York  law  specifically  declares  that  it  is  not  cruelty 
to  animals  within  the  meaning  of  the  statute.  De- 
homed  cattle,  either  milch  cows  or  steers,  herd 
together  much  more  closely,  and  it  practically  does 
away  with  the  danger  of  injury  to  the  udder  from 
hooking,  an  ever-present  source  of  loss  in  the 
horned  herd.  Hornless  animals  may  also  be  se- 
cured by  applying  a  little  caustic  potash  to  the 
embryonic  "horn  button"  of  the  three-day-old  calf. 
Of  course  the  logical  plan  would  be  to  use  hornless 
breeds  and  this  is  easy  among  beef  cattle  because 
there  are  already  three  well-known  polled  breeds, 
but  unfortunately  all  our  most  highly  developed 
dairy  types  are  homed. 

In  size  the  cow  ranges  all  the  way  from  the 
little  Kerry  cattle  of  Ireland,  which  are  the  pig- 
mies of  the  race,  up  to  the  great  Shorthorns  which 
are  probably  a  little  the  largest  of  the  breeds.  The 
Kerry  cow  Red  Rose  was  a  famous  prize  winner  of 
the  breed  but  she  is  said  to  have  stood  only  38 
inches  tall  at  the  Tvithers.  Some  mature  Keriy 
bulls  have  weighed  only  400  pounds  as  compared 
with  weights  of  2500  to  2600  pounds — not  at  all 
uncommon  in  fat  show  bulls  and  steers  of  the  beef 
breeds.  Indeed  there  is  at  least  the  story  of  a 
Shorthorn  ox  reaching  the  almost  incredible  weight 
of  4300  pounds.  The  males  are  always  much 
heavier  and  when  mature  should  weigh  about  one- 
half  more  than  a  female  of  the  same  relative  devel- 
opment. 


IV 

THE  COW,  MENTALLY  AND 
INSTINCTIVELY 

I  HAVE  been  endeavoring  to  write  a  description 
of  the  cow — trying  to  see  her  in  the  same  way  that 
John  Burroughs  saw  the  robin  or  chipmunk  or  rab- 
bit or  woodchuck  in  his  forest  walks,  or  as  Thoreau 
watched  the  wild  life  that  strove  or  gamboled  at 
the  door  of  his  lodge  on  Walden  Pond.  I  must  say 
that  I  do  not  think  the  cow  lends  herself  to  the 
same  sort  of  treatment  or,  at  any  rate,  the  task  is 
different  and  more  difficult.  All  the  native  fauna 
of  our  fields  and  woods  has  been  living  under  the 
same  set  of  conditions  for  uncounted  generations. 
An  unchanging  environment  has  tended  to  iron 
out  all  differentiation  and  variation.  The  present 
form,  size,  protective  coloration,  food  and  shelter 
habits,  every  biological  character  of  the  wild  life 
of  our  farms  represents  an  adaptation,  presum- 
ably a  very  perfect  adaptation,  to  the  conditions 
under  which  they  must  live.  Thus  there  has  re- 
sulted for  each  species  a  very  firmly  fixed  and  al- 
most unvarying  standardization  of  type.  Any 
marked  deviation  or  mutation  from  this  type  would 

33 


34  THE  COW 

be  disadvantageous  and  hence  would  tend  to  be 
extinguished.  So  in  wild  life  our  differences  are 
those  of  age  and  sex  and  season,  but,  eliminating 
these,  almost  any  chipmunk  might  sit  for  the  por- 
trait of  his  race. 

J  As  soon,  however,  as  we  turn  to  domestic  ani- 
mals we  find  an  entirely  opposite  condition.  The 
cow  for  thousands  of  years  has  been  under  the 
control  of  man.  With  him  she  has  crossed  the 
seas  to  new  conditions  and  strange  environments. 
Because  the  conditions  of  life  that  surround  her 
have  altered,  she  has  changed  herself  to  fit  them. 
This  tendency  toward  mutation  has  been  greatly 
intensified  by  the  conscious  selection  of  man,  and 
many  unusual  variations  that  in  her  native  wood- 
lands would  have  been  extinguished  have  been 
encouraged  under  the  hand  of  man,  preserved,  and 
perpetuated.  Thus,  from  being  once  almost  im- 
mutable, she  has  become,  together  with  the  dog 
and  domestic  fowl,  the  most  uncertain  and  varied 
of  animal  forms.  The  ornithologist  describes  our 
native  birds  with  most  painstaking  care  and 
minute  accuracy  and,  at  the  expense  of  infinite  time 
and  patience,  makes  colored  plates  of  their  plum- 
age and  markings.  What  would  he  do,  however, 
if  asked  to  describe  a  hen  and  then  taken  to  the 
poultry  show  to  gather  subject  matter?  How  is  it 
possible,  therefore,  to  describe  the  color  of  a  cow 
when  she  wears  almost  every  conceivable  shade 
except  the  blues  and  greens  and  every  possible 


THE  COW,  MENTALLY  35 

pattern  or  irregularity  of  color  markings?  Or 
what  shall  we  say  of  her  horns  when  they  may  be 
wide-spreading  and  very  large  or  small  and 
"crumpled,"  when  they  may  be  black-tipped  or 
ivory  white  or  yet  the  color  of  amber,  or  not  in- 
frequently they  may  be  entirely  absent?  What  is 
the  trick  of  language  that  may  enable  the  dweller 
on  Mars  to  vizualize  her?  Plainly  the  cow  cannot 
be  described  in  the  few  terse,  zoological,  almost 
mathematical  phrases  that  might  picture  the  rac- 
coon. At  best  we  must  describe  her  as  a  type 
rather  than  a  sharply  cut  species. 

The  most  interesting  traits  of  the  cow  are  not 
physical  but  mental.  Every  farm  boy  who  has 
lived  with  her  and  driven  her  from  pasture  and 
milked  her  and  taught  the  calf  to  drink  knows 
that  she  has  a  rather  definite  psychology. 

I  think  I  can  uphold  the  contention  that  most 
animals  under  domestication  (the  horse  and  dog 
being  exceptions)  are  mentally  degenerating  as 
compared  with  their  wild  forebears.  Even 
civilized  man  has  degenerated  in  some  respects,  or 
perhaps  a  kindlier  statement  would  be  that  some 
powers  which  he  once  possessed  have  been  allowed 
to  fall  into  disuse.  Stewart  Edward  White  writes 
that  he  has  seen  the  Indian  of  the  Canadian  wilds 
stoop  and  smell  the  footprint  of  a  moose  and  then 
promptly  announce  whether  it  was  made  within 
an  hour  or  a  day — a  performance  inconceivable  to 
the  civilized  white  man.    Doubtless,  we  are  not  as 


36  THE  COW 

keen  of  scent  or  as  fleet  of  foot,  nor  can  we  climb 
trees  or  resist  cold  as  did  our  savage  ancestors, 
but  in  place  of  these  powers  we  have  gained  other 
attributes  that  are  infinitely  more  worth  while. 

During  the  centuries  the  cow  has  left  behind 
many  habits  and  her  instincts  grow  progressively 
more  feeble.  Once  she  had  to  live  by  her  wits,  to 
avoid  and,  if  necessary,  to  fight  off  her  enemies  and 
to  search  for  a  food  supply  which  was  often  scanty 
and  always  uncertain,  but  under  the  care  of  man 
she  has  become  the  most  pampered  of  animals. 
Our  modern  idea  of  dairy  conditions  is  that  the 
cow  shall  never  be  allowed  to  be  hungry  or  thirsty 
or  cold.  She  is  waited  on  with  the  most  as- 
siduous attention,  for  the  owner  knows  that  dis- 
comfort on  her  part  will  immediately  be  reflected 
in  a  decreased  milk-flow.  Thus  her  special  senses 
are  slowly  dying,  but  two  functions  have  at  the 
same  time  been  abnormally  developed,  her  udder 
and  her  digestive  apparatus.  Holstein  cows  have 
given  nearly  thirty  times  their  own  weight  of  milk 
in  a  year — a  marvelous  performance  made  pos- 
sible only  by  the  fact  that  along  with  this  abnormal 
development  of  the  mammary  glands  there  has 
been  an  equally  remarkable  development  of  the 
digestive  function.  The  ideal  dairy  cow  tends  to 
approach  the  status  of  the  queen  bee,  in  which  all 
the  ordinary  habits  and  instincts  of  the  bee  have 
been  made  subservient  to  an  almost  helpless  or- 
ganism that  must  be  fed  great  quantities  of  pre- 


THE  COW,  MENTALLY  37 

pared  food  in  order  that  she  may  lay  3000  eggs  a 
day. 

Intellectually  and  morally,  a  very  good  case  can- 
not be  made  out  for  the  cow.  Her  standards  of 
ethics  and  honor  are  low.  In  her  conduct  toward 
the  other  members  of  the  herd  she  is  both  cruel  and 
cowardly.  Cattle  by  nature  are  polygamous,  rov- 
ing in  herds  with  an  old  bull  at  the  head  who  holds 
his  place  against  all  comers  by  ordeal  of  combat. 
Therefore,  the  instinct  to  fight  is  very  strong 
among  bulls.  If  a  number  of  young  bulls  run  in 
pasture  together,  they  seem  to  settle  satisfactorily 
the  question  of  precedence  and  get  along  very  well, 
but  strange  bulls  fight  on  first  introduction  until 
it  is  definitely  settled  who  is  victor.  These  com- 
bats are  sometimes  rather  spectacular  with  much 
pushing  and  scuffling  but  apparently  with  very 
little  real  injury  to  either  party.  This  combative- 
ness  seems  to  crop  out  in  the  cows  as  a  sort  of 
secondary  sexual  character,  and  every  herd  of  any 
size  will  always  have  some  hooking  and  fighting 
going  on,  resulting  sometimes  in  serious  in  jury- 
to  the  udder.  The  cow  shows  herself  a  mean 
coward,  because  frequently,  if  one  cow  is  fast  in 
the  stanchion  and  hence  unable  to  defend  herself, 
another  not  yet  fastened  will  pitch  in  and  gore 
her  most  unmercifully  until  she  bellows  with  pain 
and  terror.  So  also  many  cows  standing  in  their 
stalls  with  a  fellow  on  each  side  will  strike  with 
their  horns  first  on  one  side  and  then  on  the  other 


38  THE  COW 

in  an  effort  to  prevent  their  stall-mates  getting  any- 
thing to  eat. 

However,  cow  life  is  not  quite  all  eating  and 
fighting.  Cows  greatly  enjoy  licking  all  parts  of 
the  body  that  they  can  reach,  this  probably  being 
the  bovine  ideal  of  a  careful  toilet.  It  is  rather 
amusing  to  see  another  cow  very  carefully  bestow- 
ing this  attention  on  the  head  and  face  of  a  neigh- 
bor who,  of  course,  cannot  reach  them  with  her  own 
tongue.  It  is  hard  to  decide  whether  the  giver  or 
the  recipient  derives  most  pleasure  from  this  ser- 
vice. 

The  thrilling  moment  in  the  life  of  a  cow  is  that 
wonderful  day  in  late  May  when,  after  a  long  win- 
ter of  confinement  in  the  barn,  she  is  again  ^'turned 
out"  to  the  pasture.  That  gala  day  stirs  up  all  her 
old  instincts  and  hereditary  memories.  Playful- 
ness except  in  the  calf  is  rare  among  cattle,  but 
in  the  first  hours  at  pasture  the  whole  herd  will 
often  indulge  in  a  wild  rush,  circling  the  field  with 
tails  carried  erect,  high  over  the  back  like  banners 
and  with  strange  awkward  cavorting  and  galloping 
— for  all  the  world  like  the  rush  of  a  lot  of  young- 
sters let  out  of  school.  The  most  ardent  admirer — 
or  apologist — for  the  cow  can  hardly  claim  for  her 
grace  of  movement.  Well  fed  and  thrifty  calves, 
during  the  first  weeks  of  life,  enjoy  giving  vent  to 
their  high  spirits  in  much  galloping  in  circles  with 
clumsy  kicking  up  of  the  heels,  frequently  accom- 
panying such  g}^mnastics  with  resounding  calfish 


THE  COW,  MENTALLY  39 

"br-a-a-a-ah."  The  adult  indulges  in  such  foolish- 
ness only  on  very  special  occasions,  and  the  first 
day  at  pasture  is  one  of  these.  When  hard  driven 
by  a  dog  or  anxious  to  rejoin  the  herd  from  which 
she  has  been  separated,  the  cow  is  capable  of  a 
straightforward  running  gait  that  very  easily  out- 
strips a  man,  and  will  even  rival  a  good  horse,  but 
the  cow  merely  disporting  herself  has  a  particu- 
larly grotesque,  plunging,  wobbling  gallop. 

The  herd  on  the  first  day  at  pasture  eats  very 
little  for  the  first  two  or  three  hours.  Rather  it 
is  an  occasion  for  exploration  and  perhaps  for 
surprise  and  annoyance  that  her  domain  is  now 
so  narrow,  for  she  once  roamed  over  many  leagues 
instead  of  being  limited  by  a  fence-line  inclosing 
only  a  score  or  two  of  acres.  Life  for  a  cow  at 
pasture  is  made  up  of  periods  of  grazing  alter- 
nated with  intervals  when  she  lies  at  ease  to  pursue 
the  pleasant  task  of  chewing  the  cud  while  diges- 
tion prepares  her  stomach  for  another  fill.  As  a 
rule,  the  resting  cow  assumes  the  attitude  of  lying 
squarely  on  the  brisket  and  elbows  (knees,  in  the 
incorrect  speech  of  the  farm)  with  the  hind  legs 
drawn  up  under  her  while  she  rests  on  one  hip  or 
the  other,  but  occasionally  she  varies  this  position 
by  stretching  out  at  full  length  as  if  she  were  dead, 
even  the  head  lying  on  the  ground.  This  rather 
unusual  position  is  more  common  with  young 
heifers  or  calves.  If  pasture  is  abundant  a  very- 
few  hours  a  day  suffice  to  gather  her  food,  but 


40  THE  COW 

when  scanty  she  must  industriously  pick  all  day 
for  a  living  and  even  then  is  not  fully  fed,  as  the 
milk  pail  only  too  plainly  attests.  The  real  ro- 
mance for  the  cow  as  well  as  her  owner  lies  in  those 
first  golden  weeks  of  early  summer. 

The  gregarious  instinct  in  cows  is  strong,  and 
they  tend  to  feed  in  a  fairly  compact  herd.  As  you 
come  near  them  you  can  see  the  long  almost  pre- 
hensile tongues  gathering  and  sweeping  the  grass 
into  the  grasp  of  the  jaws,  and  you  can  hear  the 
gentle  tearing  sound  as  it  is  pulled  rather  than 
bitten  off.  An  hour  or  two  later  the  cows  will  be 
lying  down,  often  closely  bunched  together,  and 
in  hot  weather  they  are  wise  enough  to  choose  the 
shady  borders  of  the  wood.  They  enjoy  water  in 
summer,  and  vnll  often  stand  leg  deep  in  bright 
running  streams  or  ford  considerable  rivers.  They 
do  not,  however,  have  the  habit  of  wallowing  in 
the  mud  after  the  manner  of  their  close  relative, 
the  buffalo. 

Unquestionably,  there  is  a  sort  of  mass-psychol- 
ogy in  a  herd  which  leads  them  all  to  do  the  same 
thing  at  about  the  same  time.  The  farm  boy  who 
has  always  ^^brought"  the  cows  as  a  part  of  his 
boyhood  tasks  well  knows  that  if  a  part  of  the  herd 
thinks  it  is  about  time  to  move  toward  the  bars, 
all  of  them  will  prove  to  be  of  the  same  mind.  Yet 
this  same  farm  boy  also  knows  that  an  occasional 
cow  is  a  very  poor  mixer  and  will  commonly  be 


THE  COW,  MENTALLY  41 

feeding  in  a  far  corner  by  herself  when  the  re- 
mainder of  the  herd  has  decided  to  go  and  see 
whether  it  is  milking  time.  As  a  whole,  however, 
the  order  of  feeding  and  resting  and  traveling 
seems  to  rise  from  a  common  impulse. 

In  one  phase  of  pasture  life,  however,  the  cow 
attains  a  sort  of  impressive  dignity  and  that  is 
when  she  is  definitely  ^^on  the  march.''  It  is  fine 
to  see  a  large  herd  of  cows  who  have  suddenly  de- 
termined to  make  a  pilgrimage — it  may  be  merely 
to  go  for  a  drink  or  to  explore  a  distant  part  of 
the  pasture.  There  they  go,  largely  strung  out  in 
single  file,  heads  up,  looking  neither  to  the  right 
nor  left,  no  foolishness,  no  distractions  of  eating  or 
casual  fighting  allowed,  but  every  matron  stepping 
briskly  off  as  if  under  orders.  I  feel  sorry  for 
them.  It  seems  like  a  pitiful  effort  to  rehearse 
within  the  limits  of  a  pasture  field  the  old-time 
long  marches  in  search  of  far-off  feeding  grounds. 
Truly  man  has  come  to  have  dominion  over  her. 
To  me  the  most  interesting  and  impressive  thing 
about  the  cow  is  this :  that  she  still  remains  a  sure 
foundation  for  biological  musings  and  a  riddle  in 
atavism.  Written  history  is  short,  but  her  story 
is  very  long.  She  is  an  ancient  of  the  earth,  and 
her  career  is  linked  with  the  forgotten  men  of  the 
Old  Stone  Age  who  pictured  her  in  rude  outlines 
scratched  upon  the  walls  of  their  cavern  homes. 
Her  minor  characteristics,   her  size,   color,   con- 


42  THE  COW 

formation  and  function  have  been  modified  almost 
beyond  belief.  Her  very  instincts  no  longer  profit 
her,  yet  she  still  responds  and  acts  on  the  sugges- 
tions of  dim  far-off  hereditary  memories. 


CONCERNING  COW-PASTURES  AND  COW- 
PATHS 

v/  The  first  dairyman  was  wholly  a  pastoralist.  He 
proved  himself  a  wise  farm-manager  and  a  skillful 
feeder  when  he  led  his  herd  where  the  pastures 
were  richest,  and  after  thirty  centuries  the  Hebrew 
idyl,  ^'He  maketh  me  to  lie  down  in  green  pas- 
tures, He  leadeth  me  beside  the  still  waters,"  re- 
mains the  world's  most  beautiful  symbol  of  ten- 
der and  loving  care. 

The  quest  of  pasture  has  been  one  of  the  primi- 
tive forces  that  have  made  history.  Many  of  the 
great  early  migrations,  which  have  forced  whole 
peoples  across  deserts,  over  mountains  and  into 
new  valleys  and  strange  lands,  have  been  the  re- 
sult not  so  much  of  the  lust  of  power  and  the 
glory  of  empire  as  the  insistent  necessity  for  new, 
pasture  grounds.  The  thirteenth  chapter  of 
Genesis  is  not  only  an  excellent  sermon  on  the 
settlement  of  family  quarrels,  but  it  is  also  an 
illuminating  treatise  on  the  early  pasturage  situa- 
tion in  Palestine.  "Lot  also,  which  went  with 
Abram,  had  flocks,  and  herds,  and  tents.     And  the 

43 


44  THE  COW 

land  was  not  able  to  bear  them,  that  they  might 
dwell  together:  for  their  substance  was  great,  so 
that  they  could  not  dwell  together.  And  there 
was  a  strife  between  the  herdmen  of  Abram's 
cattle  and  the  herdmen  of  Lot's  cattle.  And 
Abram  said  unto  Lot,  Let  there  be  no  strife,  I 
pray  thee,  between  me  and  thee,  and  between  my 
herdmen  and  thy  herdmen;  for  we  be  brethren. 
Is  not  the  whole  land  before  thee?  Separate  thy- 
self, I  pray  thee,  from  me:  if  thou  wilt  take  the 
left  hand,  then  I  will  go  to  the  right;  or  if  thou 
depart  to  the  right  hand,  then  I  will  go  to  the 
left.  And  Lot  lifted  up  his  eyes,  and,  beheld  all 
the  plain  of  Jordan,  that  it  was  well  watered  every^- 
where.  Then  Lot  chose  him  all  the  plain  of  Jordan ; 
and  Lot  journeyed  east :  and  they  separated  them- 
selves the  one  from  the  other."  Thus  briefly  did  the 
Chronicler  set  down  the  story  of  an  ancient  quar- 
rel and  its  wise  settlement,  and  that  same  stoiy 
has  been  repeated  in  every  country  and  age  until 
now,  and  nowhere  more  bitterly  and  insistently 
than  in  these  very  years  in  the  range  country  of  our 
own  western  states. 

Pasturage  surely  represents  the  first  beginnings 
of  agriculture.  Doubtless  herds  gi^ew  to  large 
numbers  and  w^andered  widely  before  any  man  be- 
gan to  set  up  landmarks  and  boundaries  and  to 
claim  a  certain  portion  of  the  earth's  surface  for 
himself  and  for  his  heirs  and  assigns  forever. 
Only  when  one  man's  pasture  range  began  to  en- 


COW-PASTURES  AND  COW-PATHS  45 

croach  on  another's  did  he  do  this  but  once  hav- 
ing set  up  his  claim  he  must  needs  defend  it  with 
his  life  if  necessary,  and  so  all  our  land  titles  rest 
originally  on  force  or  fraud,  never  on  equity.  It 
was  a  far  cry  from  the  time  when  men  merely 
herded  their  animals  until  they  began  to  till  the 
ground  on  any  considerable  and  systematic  scale. 
In  the  days  when  animal-keeping  merely  supple- 
mented hunting  and  root-digging,  there  were  no 
large  fields  and  no  rotation  of  crops  and  no  regu- 
lar sowing  and  reaping.  This  at  least  seems  to 
have  been  the  rule  among  all  Old-World  peoples. 
The  American  Indians,  on  the  contrary,  among  the 
most  advanced  tribes  grew  considerable  areas  of 
corn  and  beans  and  even  planted  orchards,  but  save 
for  their  dogs  seem  to  have  been  without  domesti- 
cated animals.  The  probable  explanation  is  that 
almost  all  the  animals  of  our  farms  today  are  of 
Asiatic  or  European  origin  and  in  all  North 
America,  with  the  exception  of  the  bison,  there 
would  seem  to  have  been  no  large  easily  domesti- 
cated grazing  mammal. 

Unquestionably  the  first  cow-keeper  relied  solely 
on  pasture,  and  only  after  considerable  advance- 
ment did  he  develop  foresight  enough  to  provide 
stores  of  food  against  times  of  scarcity,  such  as 
drought  in  summer  or  snowbound  winter  months. 
It  must  be  confessed  that  some  cattle  ranchers  in 
our  own  western  states  have  hardly  gotten  beyond 
this  same  primitive  practice,  and  every  year  their 


46  THE  COW 

cruel  and  careless  methods  allow  cattle  to  perish 
from  starvation  and  exposure.  In  exceptionally 
severe  winters  the  loss  has  been  appalling  both 
from  a  financial  standpoint  and  from  the  animal 
suffering  involved.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  our 
farm  animals  exhibit  extraordinary  ability  to  with- 
stand— or  more  correctly  to  live  through — hard 
conditions.  It  was  long  a  fireside  tradition  of  the 
Susquehanna  Valley  that  when  the  Cherry  Valley 
massacre  took  place  in  the  autumn  of  1778,  involv- 
ing the  captivity  or  murder  of  most  of  the  settlers 
and  the  extinction  of  the  community,  some  horses 
wandered  off  into  the  woods  and  one  of  them  at 
least  was  not  reclaimed  until  three  years  later, 
having  somehow  survived  all  the  vicissitudes  and 
rigors  of  the  winters  of  the  central  New  York 
plateau.  It  is  certain  that  a  race  of  hard  ponies, 
descendants  of  horses,  shipwrecked  there  long  ago, 
can  thrive  perfectly  on  the  coastal  islands  of  tide- 
water Virginia. 

There  are  still  many  parts  of  the  world,  includ- 
ing our  own  western  range  country,  where  prac- 
tically all  animal  industry  depends  on  pasture — a 
type  of  agriculture  which  is  primitive  and  ineffi- 
cient and  must  eventually  give  way  to  a  wiser  and 
more  careful  husbandry.  This  system  can  survive 
only  on  lands  that  are  very  cheap  and  abundant  or 
else  so  steep,  rocky,  or  unproductive  as  to  forbid 
regular  rotation  and  the  use  of  the  plow. 

Viewed  in  the  light  of  present-day  methods,  our 


COW-PASTUKES  AND  COW-PATHS  47 

dairy  ideas  of  a  half  century  ago  were  certainly 
queer  to  say  the  least.  Practically  all  dairy  prod- 
ucts were  made  from  grass  in  summer,  and  the 
barn  was  frankly  regarded  as  a  sort  of  cold-storage 
proposition  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  cows  alive 
until  summer  came  again  and  green  grass  in  the 
fields  should  enable  them  to  give  milk.  Of  course, 
there  were  even  then  occasional  dairymen — men 
in  advance  of  their  time — who  were  wise  and 
liberal  feeders,  but  as  a  whole  they  seem  to  have 
had  grave  doubts  that  a  cow  could  really  yield 
milk  when  there  was  snow  on  the  ground.  Under 
this  idea  there  were  long  months  when  men  had  a 
barn  full  of  cows  but  no  milk,  and  a  generation 
ago  one  still  spoke  of  a  "coffee  cow,''  meaning 
thereby  a  cow  kept  "farrow''  and  fed  with  unusual 
care  in  order  that  she  might  supply  a  scant  ration 
of  milk  for  this  dairyman's  family  during  the  win- 
ter months.  All  this  was  a  part  of  the  old  era 
when  barns  were  frigid  and  windy  structures, 
stables  cheerless  dungeons  and  when  there  were  no 
silos  and  grain  was  deemed  too  valuable  to  be  fed 
to  cows.  She  was  expected  to  receive  somewhat 
less  than  a  maintenance  ration  of  corn-stalks  and 
over-ripe  hay  and  to  become  progressively  more 
lean  and  hungry  as  the  slow  winter  dragged  itself 
along.  She  was  expected  to  be  "spring  poor,"  and 
no  one  regarded  it  as  either  a  joke  or  a  reproach 
to  her  owner.  This  is  no  exaggeration  of  what 
might  be  called  typical  dairying  within  the  mem- 


48  THE  COW 

ory  of  many  living  men.  Yet,  with  the  coming  of 
May  and  balmy  days  and  springing  grass,  these 
same  cows  gave  birth  to  their  calves  and  under  the 
very  favorable  conditions  of  pasture  won  back 
flesh  and  strength  and  vitality  sufficient  to  carry 
them  through  another  winter  and  incidentally  to 
give  considerable  milk  and  brought  to  their  owners 
what  in  that  day  was  deemed  substantial  dairy 
prosperity.  Had  those  cows  been  human  instead  of 
bovine  they  might,  when  filled  with  grass  and  a 
great  content  in  the  golden  month  of  June,  have 
moralized  in  the  words  which  Shakespeare  puts  in 
the  mouth  of  Gloster,  "Now  is  the  winter  of  our 
discontent  made  glorious  summer." 

From  those  bad  old  times  the  science  of  cow- 
keeping  has  changed  so  radically  that  the  best 
dairymen  have  come  to  make  milk  in  winter  rather 
than  summer.  Warm  and  sunny  stables,  comfort- 
able stalls,  silage,  early  cut  hay  and  liberal  grain 
rations  have  made  the  cow  and  her  owner  inde- 
pendent of  weather  conditions.  So  far  as  milk 
production  is  concerned,  June  is  hardly  more  fav- 
orable than  December.  Indeed,  in  the  making  of 
Advanced  Kegistry  records,  where  the  aim  is  to 
force  a  cow  to  the  last  possible  ounce  of  her  milk 
yield,  it  is  generally  agreed  that  the  winter  is  the 
most  favorable  season  of  the  year.  So  also  we  feel 
sure  that  the  well-cared-for  cow  that  "comes  fresh'' 
in  October  will  yield  more  milk  in  the  next  twelve 
months  than  if  she  calved  in  April. 


COW-PASTUEES  AND  COW-PATHS  49 

All  this  does  not  contradict  the  fact  that  even 
under  modern  conditions,  pasture  is  still  of  prime 
importance  in  dairying.  There  are  now,  and  in- 
creasingly will  be,  men  located  on  very  valuable 
land  which  is  level,  fertile,  and  easily  tilled,  who 
will  feel  that  they  cannot  afford  to  pasture  it,  but 
will  depend  instead  on  soiling  crops  grown  under 
conditions  of  intensive  culture.  In  some  cases  this 
will  be  good  farming  and  sound  management,  but 
on  the  whole,  our  dairying  still  rests  on  a  basis 
of  pasturage. 

It  is  not  a  foolish  boast, — it  is  a  fact  that  New 
York  state  is  the  real  Kingdom  of  the  Cow. 
Among  the  states  of  the  Union  it  stands  only 
seventeenth  in  available  acreage,  but  it  ranks  first  ^ 
in  the  value  of  its  dairy  products.  Up  in  the 
North  Country  of  New  York  the  fields  are  fairly 
level,  but  the  old  glaciers  have  made  them  a  dump- 
ing ground  for  their  granite  debris.  These  bowlder- 
strewn  and  often  poorly  drained  fields  cover  large 
areas  of  no  possible  agricultural  use  except  for 
pasturage.  St.  Lawrence  County  has  more  than 
96,000  dairy  cows— a  striking  example  of  how  a 
people  has  adapted  its  farm  scheme  to  the  environ- 
ment. 

Down  in  the  southeast  of  the  state  are  the  two 
remarkable  dairy  counties  of  Orange  and  Dela- 

^New  York  state  seems  to  fluctuate  between  first  and  third 
place.  She  probably  stands  first  in  value  because  so  much  of 
her  product  sells  as  liquid  milk. 


50  THE  COW 

ware  where  the  cow  has  been  supreme  for  a  cen- 
tury. It  is  here  where  as  nowhere  else  the  romance 
of  the  old  days  survives.  Long  ago  the  old  Orange 
County  Bank  printed  its  bank  notes  in  golden  yel- 
low to  signify  that  butter  was  the  source  of  the 
wealth  and  prosperity  of  the  county.  The  whole 
agricultural  scheme  of  this  region  rests  on  the  fact 
that  the  valleys  are  very  narrow  and  the  hillsides 
too  steep  and  rocky  to  till,  yet  out  of  these  same 
hills  burst  springs  of  pure  soft  water,  and  cover- 
ing them  is  a  carpet  of  small,  sweet,  natural 
grasses  which  have  made  them  as  famous  in  story 
as  the  blue-grass  regions  of  Kentucky.  Along  the 
Pennsylvania  line  from  Delaware  County  to  the 
Chautauqua  grape  belt  is  the  '^Southern  Tier,''  a 
region  of  river  valleys  with  much  not  too  fertile 
upland  that  more  and  more  is  coming  to  realize 
that  it  is  fundamentally  a  land  of  cow-pastures. 
Indeed,  when  one  comes  to  survey  this  great  state, 
one  realizes  that  ultimately  the  dairy  cow  will  pos- 
sess the  land  everywhere  save  on  Long  Island,  parts 
of  the  Hudson  Valley,  the  beautiful  cereal-growing 
Finger  Lake  country  of  the  western  counties,  and 
the  favored  golden  orchard  section  of  the  Ontario 
shore.  Conditions  of  soil,  topography,  rainfall, 
markets  and  even  heredity  and  racial  stocks  have 
been  the  determining  factors  which  have  made 
dairying  the  premier  industry  in  our  northeastern 
states.  In  a  word,  the  cow  has  gone  in  greatest 
numbers  where  there  were  large  sections  of  land 


COW-PASTUEES  AND  COW-PATHS  51 

suited  for  pasture  but  not  for  a  more  intensive 
agriculture,  and  any  extensive  scheme  of  dairy- 
practice  must  recognize  this  fact. 

It  is  true  that  the  changes  and  advances  of  re- 
cent years  have  made  pasture  of  relatively  less  im- 
portance than  of  old,  but  nevertheless  the  annual 
revenue  derived  from  these  old  hillside  pastures 
is  a  vast  sum.  For  example,  the  preeminent  month 
of  all  the  year  for  milk  production  is  June,  and  the 
tremendous  flood  of  milk  which  each  year  almost 
inundates  our  manufacturing  facilities  and  de- 
moralizes our  markets  is  produced  wholly  from 
pasture.  Our  fathers  expected  a  cow  to  derive  her 
entire  living  from  the  open  fields  from  the  middle 
of  May  until  the  last  frosted  grass  of  late  October 
was  closely  bitten  off.  We  of  a  wiser  generation 
have  come  to  understand  that  there  is  only  a  month 
or  two  in  the  year  of  really  good  pasture.  Progres- 
sive cow-keepers  almost  universally  supplement  the 
grass  after  July  1st  with  grain,  or  better,  with 
liberal  feeding  of  silage  stored  the  previous  Sep- 
tember or  else  with  fresh-cut  oats  and  peas  in 
mixture  or  other  soiling  forage. 

Pasture  is  at  once  both  the  cheapest  and  most 
expensive  of  feeds — cheap  because  the  cow  gathers 
it  herself  and  because  we  usually  set  a  low  value 
on  the  land  where  it  grows,  and  yet  expensive  as 
the  total  nutrients  to  the  acre  of  pasture  are  so 
small  as  compared  with  those  secured  from  more 
intensive  cropping  systems.    It  requires  an  acre  of 


52  THE  COW 

the  very  best  or  two  of  fairly  good  pasture  to  feed 
a  cow  for  the  summer  months  and  even  then  she 
will  not  be  really  fully  fed  after  midsummer.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  quite  usual  and  feasible  to 
grow  fifteen  tons  of  silage  corn  to  the  acre  or 
enough  to  furnish  the  main  roughage  requirements 
of  three  cows  for  the  full  feeding  period  of  two 
hundred  days  when  they  get  no  food  outside. 
When  fields  are  steep  and  rock-strewn,  we  may 
still  rely  on  a  pnmitive  pasture  husbandry  for  a 
large  part  of  our  summer  feeding,  but  it  is  a 
wasteful  and  extravagant  method  where  lands  are 
level,  fertile  and  easily  tilled.  This  does  not  alter 
the  fact  that  there  are  very  many  farms  whose 
prosperity  is  bound  up  with  their  pasture  areas. 

If  we  study  the  question,  we  cannot  escape  the 
conclusion  that  the  value  of  our  great  pasture  re- 
sources is  declining  with  the  years.  This  decline 
is  not  rapid  and  perhaps  it  may  be  so  slow  that  the 
owner  fails  to  be  really  aware  of  it,  but  if  he  com- 
pares the  carrying  capacity  of  a  pasture  now  with 
its  ability  many  years  ago  the  downward  tendency 
becomes  evident.  As  farmers  we  have  been  very 
slow  to  realize  that  permanent  pastures,  like  all 
other  lands,  need  fertilizers  and  care.  We  have 
been  quick  to  agree  that  land  which  is  plowed 
and  sowed  and  harvested  by  a  machine  needs 
manuring,  but  there  has  been  a  widespread  yet 
mistaken  notion  that  land  lying  in  pasture  will 
improve  under  opposite  treatment.    There  is  abso- 


COW-PASTUEES  AND  COW-PATHS  53 

lutely  nothing  either  in  theory  or  practice  to  justify 
this  belief.  It  is  true  that  the  total  quantity  of 
plant-food  in  all  good  soils  is  very  great ;  yet  it  is 
not  unlimited  and  it  cannot  be  subtracted  from 
every  year  for  generations  without  some  day  ap- 
proaching the  end  of  abundance.  There  are  perma- 
nent pastures  where  in  many  cases  for  a  century 
the  cows  have  been  carrying  away  everything  that 
grew  and  where  there  has  never  been  any  pretense 
of  returning  either  fertility  or  grass-seed.  The 
owner  now  wonders  vaguely  why  that  old  hill  does 
not  seem  to  feed  as  many  cows  as  it  used  to  in 
grandfather's  time.  Of  course,  the  argument  is 
that  while  the  cow  takes  evei-ything  off  the  land, 
she  immediately  returns  her  manure  in  liquidation 
of  the  debt.  This  line  of  reasoning  is  very  faulty 
because  some  of  this  fertility  is  permanently  lost 
to  the  farm  and  some  of  it  is  redistributed  to  other 
areas.  Mere  pasturing  does  not  constitute  soil  con- 
servation. When  we  remember  that  each  ton  of 
milk  contains,  say,  twelve  pounds  of  nitrogen,  four 
pounds  of  phosphoric  acid  and  four  pounds  of 
potash,  and  that  these  old  pastures  have  been  fur- 
nishing scores  of  tons  of  milk  annually  for  genera- 
tions, and  when  we  add  to  this  the  much  more 
serious  loss  due  to  other  causes,  we  see  that  our  old 
pastures  present  a  very  serious  problem  in  soil 
depletion. 

In  general,  these  old  worn  fields  are  to  be  treated 
in  one  of  three  ways.     Those  reasonably  free  of 


54  THE  COW 

large  stones  and  trees  and  level  enough  to  admit 
the  use  of  modern  farm  machinery  ought  to  be 
plowed  and,  for  a  season  or  two  at  least,  put  into 
the  regular  rotation  of  the  farm.  A  pasture  that 
can  be  handled  in  this  way  does  not  constitute  a 
real  problem. 

There  are  other  fields  too  valuable  to  abandon 
but  not  practicable  to  till.  These  should  be  helped 
out  with  applications  of  lime,  acid-phosphate  and 
grass-seed — never  forgetting  the  grass-seed — ^be- 
cause pasture  failure  is  not  a  question  of  depleted 
fertility  alone,  but  is  also  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
grass  plants  have  died  out  and  there  are  no  new 
ones  to  take  their  place.  Grass  plants  do  not  live 
forever,  any  more  than  do  the  trees  in  an  orchard, 
and  the  only  method  of  renewal  that  we  know  is 
scattering  grass  seed  in  early  spring.  Much  has 
been  said  about  this,  and  many  kinds  of  seed  have 
been  suggested ;  but  we  may  at  least  remember  that 
the  ideal  pasture  is  a  mixture  of  blue-grass  and 
white  clover;  so  whatever  else  w^e  do,  let  us  not 
forget  the  "grass  that  made  Kentucky  famous'^  and 
the  plant  which  is  said  to  furnish  two-thirds  of  the 
commercial  honey  crop  of  eastern  North  America. 

Another  class  of  so-called  pastures  ought  never 
to  have  been  cleared  of  forests  in  the  beginning. 
They  have  in  them  no  possibilities  to  justify  the 
expenditure  of  either  labor  or  fertility,  and  the 
quicker  Nature  takes  them  back  to  her  kindly  pro- 
tection, the  better.    With  them,  the  best  policy  is 


,2  «y 


.3  <a 


-c  +j  o 
—  -  '^ 

"^    O    rt 


c 


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Is 

^5 


<1  5 


SP 


COW-PASTURES  AND  COW-PATHS  55 

frank  abandonment,  with  forestry.  Perhaps  a 
generation  yet  unborn  may  cut  a  crop  of  lumber 
from  them  two  or  three  centuries  hence. 

There  are  some  very  familiar  and  commonplace 
objects  and  scenes  in  whose  very  nature  there 
inheres  an  indefinable  charm  which  we  cannot  ex- 
plain or  analyze  and  which  yet  has  a  very  real  and 
distinct  value  in  life.  To  this  quality  we  sometimes 
give  the  name  of  romance  or  sentiment.  Doubtless 
the  ability  to  thrill  to  this  unexplained  force  varies 
in  different  individuals  and  is  aroused  by  different 
objects,  yet  every  one  must  acknowledge  to  some 
extent  the  sway  of  these  intangible  forces.  Our 
literature  is  filled  with  the  efforts  of  men  who  have 
tried  to  express  the  emotions  they  have  felt  when 
in  the  presence  of  that  which  appealed  to  them. 
Men  cross  the  seas  that  they  may  stand  in  the 
presence  of  the  mementoes  of  departed  civilization, 
"Old,  forgotten,  far  off  things  and  battles  long 
ago.''  Yet  I  doubt  whether  anything  has  in  it  more 
of  this  mystic  appeal  than  the  life  of  old  farms  as 
expressed  in  pastures  with  bright  brooks  and 
spreading  trees,  and  cow-paths  worn  hard  and 
sunken  in  the  turf. 

Gray's  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church  Yard  is  by 
common  consent  the  one  almost  faultlessly  perfect 
pastoral  poem  of  our  English  tongue,  and  when  the 
poet  wished  to  convey  the  thought  of  peace  de- 
scending with  the  sunset  like  a  mantle  over  a  lovely 
summer  land,  he  hit  on  that  line  whose  cadence 


56  THE  COW 

once  heard  must  ever  linger  in  our  hearts,  "The 
lowing  herd  wind  slowly  o'er  the  lea."  Just  on  the 
side,  I  am  inclined  to  question  the  accuracy  of  the 
poet's  observation.  In  America,  at  least,  cattle  do 
not  spend  much  time  lowing  when  at  pasture.  On 
the  whole  they  are  silent  beasts,  whereas  sheep 
bleat  long  and  loud  under  the  slightest  disturbance 
or  excitement.  It  is  true  that  the  cow  separated 
from  her  calf  (more  especially  if  reminded  of  the 
separation  by  a  painfully  full  udder)  will  some- 
times low  (in  the  speech  of  the  farm,  "beller"  or 
"bawl" )  most  persistently.  So  also,  if  a  part  of  the 
herd  has  broken  out  into  a  forbidden  field,  those 
still  left  behind  will  frequently  lift  up  their  voices 
in  frenzied  inquiries  as  to  just  how  it  happened.  A 
high  spirited  uneasy  bull  confined  in  a  stall  may 
make  himself  a  nuisance  by  "the  mimic  thunder 
in  his  cry"  as  he  roars  out  his  challenge  to  his 
imaginary  rival,  but,  on  the  whole,  the  contented 
cow  is  dumb. 

"Wind  slowly  o'er  the  lea,"  however,  is  good 
poetry  and  correct  zoology.  The  old  migratory 
instinct  of  the  wild  cow  still  survives  and  a  herd 
ranging  in  a  good  sized  pasture  covers  it  rather 
widely  and  systematically  under  a  recognized 
leadership.  A  herd  will  commonly  feed  for  a  few 
hours  until  full,  and  then  lie  down  in  a  fairly  com- 
pact group  to  ruminate,  and  after  an  hour  or  two, 
apparently  in  obedience  to  a  common  impulse,  they 
will  get  up  and  start  for  another  part  of  the  field. 


COW-PASTUEES  AND  COW-PATHS  67 

In  these  short  migrations  it  will  be  noted  that 
certain  individuals  are  nearly  always  at  the  front, 
while  others  quite  as  surely  trail  along  behind. 
When  thus  "going  somewhere"  they  are  fond  of 
walking  single  file  as  their  well-defined,  hard- 
beaten,  and  often  somewhat  sunken  cow-paths 
attest. 

As  commonplace  a  thing  as  a  cow-path,  by  the 
way,  is  really  a  record  worth  study  and  musing. 
The  same  path  is  followed  year  after  year,  and  if 
obliterated  by  plowing  and  later  the  field  is  again 
returned  to  pasture,  it  will  be  reestablished  fol- 
lowing almost  exactly  the  same  course.  The  ex- 
planation is  simply  that  the  cow  is  a  past-master 
in  the  engineering  art  of  choosing  the  easiest  grade 
between  two  points.  Emphatically  she  does  not  go 
over  a  knoll,  she  goes  around,  and  one  can  only 
wish  that  the  pioneers  who  were  responsible  for 
the  roads  through  our  hill  country  might  have  had 
just  a  little  of  this  good  cow  sense.  The  cow  does 
not  stick  to  paths  when  in  a  hurry  or  urged  on  by 
a  driver,  but  they  make  use  of  them  when  on  their 
leisurely  journeys.  Sheep,  by  the  way,  have  this 
same  habit  of  wandering  in  beaten  trails.  I  do  not 
know  that  the  most  enthusiastic  lover  of  the  cow 
will  contend  that  she  is  remarkable  for  her  in- 
telligence. She  has  neither  the  spirit  and  courage 
of  the  horse  nor  the  love  of  mankind  that  marks  the 
dog,  nor  the  devotion  to  locality  as  distinguished 
from  attachment  to  persons  that  distinguishes  the 


58  THE  COW 

cat,  and  I  am  afraid  the  common  barnyard  variety 
of  hog  is  her  intellectual  superior.  This  is  as  it 
should  be,  for  the  extreme  dairy  "temperament"  is 
characterized  by  placidity,  not  to  say  a  phlegmatic 
disposition. 

The  modem  dairy  cow  is  a  very  artificial  crea- 
ture who  by  long  centuries  of  environment  and 
selection  has  come  to  have  a  stomach  capable  of 
digesting  unbelievable  quantities  of  food,  and  an 
abnormally  developed  mammary  gland  that  may 
secrete  milk  enough  for  three  or  four  calves,  while 
at  the  same  time  she  has  very  largely  lost  her  old- 
time  keenness  of  hearing  and  scent.  She  remains, 
however,  a  creature  of  habit  and  an  excellent  judge 
of  meal  time,  without  the  necessity  of  observing 
the  sun.  If  she  knows  that  there  is  a  little  handful 
of  meal  ready  in  her  manger,  she  Tvdll  be  waiting 
at  the  bars  to  meet  you  at  milking  time.  So  also, 
the  cow  with  an  uncomfortably  full  udder  comes 
to  understand  that  relief  awaits  her  at  the  hand 
of  the  milker,  and  so  she  learns  to  present  herself 
for  his  attention.  After  all,  man  is  not  the  only 
animal  who  is  most  strongly  appealed  to  through 
the  stomach. 

In  all  the  year  there  is  just  one  perfect  month 
for  cows  to  pasture  and  that  is  June.  Then  the 
grass  is  lush  and  abundant,  and  if  there  be  a  cow 
heaven  it  must  be  typified  by  a  pasture  field  in 
June  when  she  lies  knee  deep  in  verdant  fragrant 
grass  with  the  sunlight  flooding  the  land  and  the 


COW-PASTUEES  AND  COW-PATHS  59 

pasture  brushed  with  light  and  shadow,  as  the 
fleecy  clouds  drift  across  the  sky.  With  July  the 
grass  becomes  less  abundant  and  palatable,  and 
then  begins  the  plague  of  cattle  flies  and  lesser 
inse€t  pests  which  sometimes  make  August  a 
month  of  almost  maddening  torment  and  seriously 
diminish  the  milk-flow.  With  the  coming  of  the 
first  sharp  frosts  the  insects  largely  disappear, 
although  they  seem  particularly  savage  in  their 
attacks  when  aroused  during  the  heat  of  some  of 
those  wonderful  belated  summer  days  that  fall  in 
early  autumn. 

It  often  happens  that  the  aftermath  may  be 
grazed  in  September  and  early  October  with  most 
excellent  results  so  far  as  the  cow  is  concerned, 
although  the  practice  is  bad  from  the  standpoint  of 
maintaining  productive  meadows.  Most  of  us  who 
are  cow-keepers,  however,  succumb  to  the  tempta- 
tion to  follow  this  easy  practice.  Some  years 
when  we  have  a  warm  moist  fall,  we  may  lightly 
graze  the  winter  wheat  or  rye  with  little  apparent 
injury  to  the  crop.  This  lush  delicious  forage  is 
unsurpassed, — possibly  unequalled  among  all  feeds. 
It  will  never  fail  to  stimulate  the  milk-flow  in  the 
most  astonishing  way.  However,  as  October  draws 
on,  the  grass  becomes  short  and  frosted  and  less 
nutritious  and  the  wise  dairyman  will  usually  be 
content  to  have  his  cows  almost  on  full  winter 
rations  by  the  middle  of  that  most  glorious  month. 

Doubtless  it  is  true  that  pasture  will  be  an  ever 


60  THE  COW 

decreasing  factor  in  onr  scheme  of  dairy  industry. 
We  are  told  that  it  is  very  much  wiser  and  more 
progressive  and  better  all  around  to  grow  soiling 
crops  and  cut  and  cany  them  to  the  cow  in  the 
bam.  One  may  deliver  quite  a  fine  sounding  lec- 
ture on  the  economic  advantage  of  soiling  cows. 
But  I  am  glad  that  there  are  so  many  farms  where 
cow-pastures  can  never  pass.  The  rich  corn-belt 
farmer  will  let  his  cows  drink  water  out  of  an  iron 
bowl  in  the  stall  or  out  of  a  concrete  watering 
trough  where  water  is  pumped  from  a  driven  well 
by  a  gasoline  engine.  But  my  dream-farm  will  al- 
ways have  old  rocky  hillside  pastures,  threaded 
and  laced  with  cow-paths  where  old  trees  cast  deep 
shadows  and  little  ravines  with  thickets  make 
caverns  of  shade,  and  cows  drink  out  of  little  bright 
running  brooks  and  stand  at  the  bars  until  the 
children  come  home  from  school  to  call  them  to 
the  barns.  And  I  like  the  unremembered  Harvard 
student  who  made  a  verse  about  it  thus : 

"She  stood  at  the  bars  as  the  sun  went  down 
At  the  close  of  a  beautiful  summer  day; 
Her  eyes  were  tender  and  big  and  brown 
Her  breath  was  as  sweet  as  the  new  mown  hay." 


VI 

CONCERNING    OLD     STONE    WALLS    AND 
COWS   AND    OTHER   THINGS 

The  final  test  to  be  applied  to  any  type  of  farm- 
ing is  the  kind  of  rural  civilization  that  is  nour- 
ished by  it.  Every  one  with  capacity  to  call  up 
visions  of  bygone  things,  and  who  has  been  so 
blessed  in  childhood  and  youth  as  to  have  known 
the  life  of  a  well  conditioned  farm,  will  possess 
within  himself  a  treasure  house  of  halcyon  mem- 
ories. And  every  one  will  visualise  a  different  pic- 
ture of  many  diverse  elements,  yet  each  of  them  at 
heart  will  be  very  much  the  same  for  each  will  glow 
with  the  perennial  magic  of  the  Land. 

The  old  man  whose  locks  are  thin  and  white  will 
sit  in  the  sun  and  close  his  eyes  and  hear  again 
across  the  years  the  ring  of  the  whet-stone  on  the 
steel  and  the  swishing  music  of  the  swinging  scythe, 
or  he  will  see  the  rhythmic  sweep  of  cradlers  laying 
the  long  swaths  of  wheat  and  other  men  following 
them  to  bind  the  sheaves  with  bands  of  twisted 
straw,  or  he  will  remember  again  the  bubbly  sound 
of  milk  being  drawn  from  full  udders  into  foaming 
pails  and  the  muffled  gurgle  of  the  old  dash  churn. 

61 


62  THE  COW 

Then  too,  there  will  come  to  him  memories  of 
snowbound  days  and  the  sound  of  beating  flails  on 
threshing  floors  and  the  thud  of  the  loom  and  the 
whining  song  of  the  spinning-wheel  beside  the 
kitchen  fire — for  all  these  forgotten  things  were 
on  our  farms  within  the  retrospect  of  many  living 
men. 

And  to  the  man  from  our  corn-belt  states  will 
come  pictures  of  a  fat  and  fertile  land  where  the 
sun  comes  up^  not  over  wooded  eastern  hills,  but 
out  of  a  sea  of  grain  and  runs  his  course  and  drops 
down  and  is  lost  in  corn-fields  and  meadows. 
Boyhood  memories  to  him  will  be  of  long  straight 
corn  rows  under  August  sun  and  the  clack  of  the 
grain-binder  and  the  snarl  and  whine  and  boom  of 
the  great  steam  threshing-machine  and  men  going 
back  and  forth  across  the  fields  to  husk  the  com 
when  autumn  frosts  grow  sharp.  These  he  remem- 
bers and  many  other  things.  And  yet  other  men 
whose  happy  fate  it  was  to  live  in  our  fat  Ontario 
Shore  country  will  see  orchards  flowery  in  May  and 
great  heaps  of  red  and  russet  apples  beneath  the 
trees,  glowing  in  October  days,  or  will  behold  again 
the  gathering  of  purple  grapes  when  the  air  is 
heavy  with  the  fragrance  of  the  vine  and  the  land 
is  full  of  joy,  and  for  him  these  horticultural  mem- 
ories will  be  the  best  in  life.  But  I  am  persuaded 
that  to  no  one  else  can  come  so  many  visions  as  to 
the  boy  of  the  dairy  farm. 

For  I  see  an  old  red  bam  and  beyond  the  barn 


OLD  STONE  WALLS  63 

an  orchard  of  gnarled  and  ancient  apple  trees  which 
great  grandfather  planted  when  he  looked  out  on 
life  with  sunny  eyes  a  hundred  years  before.  This 
orchard  had  always  blooms  in  May  and  always 
there  were  apples  from  August  until  the  last  hard 
winter  fruit  was  gathered  in.  There  were  Ox  ap- 
ples and  Peggy  Sweets  and  Hooks  and  Goodyear 
Pippins  and  Long  Stems,  and  other  sorts  unknown 
to  any  pomologist  save  the  farm  boy,  and  their 
flavor  and  their  fragrance  will  never  pass.  Be- 
yond the  orchard  is  a  lane  with  stone  walls  on 
either  side  and  walnut  trees  and  wild  beasts  of 
the  forest — chipmunks  and  chattering  red  squirrels 
and  even  woodchucks  seeking  shelter  with  shrill 
whistles  of  fright.  And  then  at  the  end  of  the  lane 
is  yet  another  enchanted  land — a  grove  of  pine 
trees  which  dropped  down  pungent  scented  cones 
and  whispered  and  sobbed  even  on  quiet  sunny 
days,  and  which,  on  windy  evenings,  when  I  was 
late  with  the  cows,  made  a  great  solemn  sound  like 
the  sea  surf  trampling  on  the  sand. 

Nor  is  this  all,  for  beyond  the  pine  grove  are 
more  walnut  trees  and  great  umbrella  elms  and 
maples  from  which  to  make  sugar  in  the  spring. 
There  is  a  stream  w^hich  is  bright  and  clear  and 
makes  a  pleasant  babble  in  May  and  early  June, 
but  grows  lazy  and  feeble  as  the  summer  wanes. 
If  you  lie  prone  on  the  little  plank  bridge  ( as  I  do 
still)  and  gaze  steadfastly  into  the  pool  beneath, 
you  may  see  darting  minnows  and  dace  and  even 


64  THE  COW 

suckers,  and  these  fishes  years  ago  were  the  finny 
leviathan  of  the  deep.  Then  across  the  brook  and 
running  up  against  the  "mountain"  to  meet  the 
woodland  are  fifty  acres  of  pasture — a  land  of  trees 
and  rocks  and  little  ravines  and  old  stone  walls 
mostly  fallen  down.  Here  the  cattle  of  Hillside 
Farm  have  come  to  pasture  for  all  its  history  and 
may,  I  hope,  for  generations  yet  to  come.  Always 
in  the  speech  of  our  farm  it  has  been  designated 
as  "across  the  creek,"  meaning  thereby  a  region — 
and  always  for  me  it  was  an  enchanted  land.  Is 
it  not  a  priceless  heritage  for  a  boy  to  have  the 
privilege  when  the  sun  is  low,  of  going  through 
scenes  like  these — to  climb  the  hill  and  call  the 
cows  and  send  them  splashing  through  the  brook 
and  then  on  up  through  the  grove  and  lane  and 
orchard  and  to  the  barn,  and  after  milking  to  take 
them  back  again  and  leave  them  keeping  watch 
under  the  stars?  On  such  things  as  these  was  my 
boyhood  fed  and  my  little  clear-eyed  son  also  knew 
all  these  enchantments. 
^  You  may  not  judge  a  farm  or  determine  its  value 
by  the  familiar  standards  of  acreage  or  fertility 
or  topography  or  access  to  markets.  You  may  not 
reckon  its  desirability  even  by  the  social  charac- 
ter of  the  rural  community  of  which  it  is  a  part. 
Three  things  there  are  which  must  go  to  make  up 
my  dream-farm.  First,  it  must  be  a  place  where 
there  are  animals  as  well  as  crops,  for  the  greatest 
interest  in  country  life  can  come  only  from  breath- 


OLD  STONE  WALLS  65 

ing  moving  things.  Of  all  our  animals,  no  other 
has  so  much  of  contact  with  human  life  and  of  the 
poetry  of  the  ages  as  the  dairy  cow.  Secondly, 
this  farm  must  lie  in  the  Hill-Country  so  that  for 
the  boy  there  may  be  rocks  to  climb  and  woodlands 
to  explore  and  little  ravines  to  wander  in  and 
great  peaceful  hills  to  which  he  may  lift  up  his 
eyes  and  purple  distances  across  which  to  gaze. 
And  thirdly,  this  farm  must  be  in  the  old  agricul- 
tural East  with  a  continuity  of  history — a  farm 
to  which  has  come  the  glory  of  the  years,  where 
men  and  women  have  lived  and  wrought  out  their 
lives  and  been  gathered  to  their  fathers.  There  is 
in  truth  something  stirring,  something  epic,  in 
the  pioneer  setting  up  his  home  on  the  forefront 
of  civilization.  I  am  told  that  men  come  at  length 
to  love  the  limitless  prarie  and  its  clear  distances 
and  its  blowing  air.  But  when  I  see  my  ideal  farm 
it  is  always  with  barns  and  drowsy  cows,  and  it 
will  lie  in  the  lap  of  the  valley  where  the  summits 
of  the  hills  are  wooded  and  blue  and  far  away,  and 
it  will  be  an  old  farm  so  that  the  folk  who  dwell 
there  will  speak  of  things  in  terms  of  generations 
instead  of  years.  And  I  confess  that  while  good 
farming  bids  us  have  new  barns  that  are  white 
within  and  gleaming  with  paint  without,  yet  I  love 
old  spreading  barns  with  swallows  under  the  eaves 
and  colonies  of  doves  within  the  gables.  And  I 
like  farm-houses,  good  sized  and  suggestive  of 
generous  life  but  not  too  spick  and  span.    For  all 


66  THE  COW 

worthy  old  houses  are  thronged  with  ghosts — 
ghosts  of  happy  bridals  when  a  young  man  and  a 
woman  stand,  with  clasped  hands  and  their  eyes 
solemn  with  love  and  the  wonder  and  the  mystery 
of  it  all.  There  are  ghosts  of  infants  haunting 
dim  upper  chambers  with  memories  of  hush  and 
expectation  and  then  of  joy  because  a  child  is  born 
into  the  world.  Then  there  are  other  and  more 
somber  ghosts  telling  of  how  the  master  of  the 
farm  full  of  days  and  honor  was  ready  to  leave 
the  home,  and  how  the  masters  of  neighboring 
farms  have  come  in  with  solemn  manner  and 
carried  him  first  to  the  old  church  and  then  to  the 
burial  place  to  mingle  his  own  with  the  family 
dust. 

Old  farms  gather  to  themselves  what  only  the 
years  can  purchase — traditions.  There  are  tradi- 
tions of  disaster  or  of  success,  stories  of  the  lean 
years  when  hail  swept  the  farm  in  July  or  when 
the  corn  frosted  in  August — tales  of  the  fat  years 
when  the  wheat  at  harvest  (as  once  in  many  years 
it  did)  stood  so  thick  and  strong  that  on  the  great 
billow  of  bowing  heads  the  men  laid  the  cradle 
and  it  did  not  fall  to  the  ground.  Many  are  the 
stories  such  as  these  which  cluster  around  old 
farms. 

Perhaps  if  there  is  any  object  which  represents 
the  very  essence  of  farm  sentiment,  it  is  old  stone 
walls.  There  is  plenty  of  utility  but  very  little 
sentiment  in  barbed  wire.     You  cannot  sit  on  a 


OLD  STONE  WALLS  67 

barbed  wire  fence.  You  cannot  even  moralize  on 
it.  You  avoid  it  and  go  around  on  the  other  side. 
It  may  have  an  air  of  smart  newness  but  nothing 
more.  A  stone  wall  is  lovely  in  decay.  It  is  al- 
ways a  text-book  of  geology,  and  it  is  a  sure  founda- 
tion for  dreams  and  memories.  I  wonder  whether 
I  could  love  a  farm  that  had  no  stone  walls. 
There  is  a  sort  of  artificial  beauty  in  a  carefully 
trained  hedge  beside  a  velvet  lawn,  but  there  is 
genuine  poetry  in  a  moss-grown  and  tumbled-down 
stone  wall  in  a  pasture,  especially  if  there  be  a 
cow-path  beside  it.  A  stretch  of  such  wall  sug- 
gests a  volume  of  farm  history. 

So  while  a  stranger  or  my  friend  sees  only  some 
acres  of  grassy  hillside  with  old  trees  and  rocks 
and  ancient  walls,  I  see  more.  I  see  a  stalwart 
pioneer  chopping  out  a  place  for  the  home  and  the 
log  cabin  rising  in  the  clearing.  I  see  the  first 
wheat  crop  growing  bronze  and  golden  with  black- 
ening stumps  amid  it  like  tiny  islands  in  a  yellow 
sea.  I  see  the  cabin  become  a  home  because  there 
is  a  woman  happy  in  her  toil  and  sturdy  children 
playing  by  the  door.  I  watch  the  years  slip  past 
and  the  domain  of  the  farmer  broaden  as  he  pushes 
the  forest  further  back  from  his  hearth-stone.  I 
behold  him  and  his  sons  and  his  men  and  his  ox- 
team — always  the  ox-team — as  he  clears  the  land 
of  stones  and  piles  them  up  into  walls,  monuments 
to  his  time.  I  see  him  through  the  rich  years  of 
his  prime  while  his  family  is  growing  up,  wres- 


68  THE  COW 

tling  always  with  the  primitive  herculean  labors 
of  the  pioneer,  and  then  one  day  I  see  an  old  and 
time-worn  man  with  a  form  built  for  strength  but 
very  still,  carried  out  on  his  last  going,  and  I  see 
two  of  his  sons  take  up  the  work  where  he  laid  it 
down,  still  clearing  the  land  and  building  always 
more  walls. 

I  confess  that  with  us  building  stone  walls  is  at- 
taining the  dignity  of  a  lost  art.  I  do  not  think 
this  is  because  we  are  sluggards  but  rather  be- 
cause there  are  so  many  mills  drawing  wire  and 
such  wonderful  mechanical  fingers  weaving  it  into 
ready-made  fencing  at  very  moderate  prices  a  rod. 

But  in  the  Hill-Country  those  long  gray  lines  of 
piled-up  stone  represent  a  very  important  part  of 
the  epic  labors  of  the  pioneer.  I  believe  that  the 
toil  invested  in  this  particular  farm  activity  in 
the  northeastern  and  New  England  states  during 
the  last  three  hundred  years  would  in  the  aggre- 
gate exceed  that  involved  in  building  the  Panama 
Canal  or  our  transcontinental  railways.  It  was 
accomplished  by  men  who  counted  not  the  hours 
and  who  labored  with  enthusiasm  because  they  felt 
that  theirs  was  a  goodly  heritage. 

The  pitiful  fact  about  it  all,  however,  is  that 
very  often  this  has  proved  unrewarded  toil.  It 
seems  to  me  that  there  was  something  fine  about 
these  earlier  generations  of  men — something  that 
we  have  lost.  In  the  Hill-Country  of  New  York 
and  New  England  where  land  values  are  low  and 


OLD  STONE  WALLS  69 

agriculture  is  decadent,  there  are  so  often  stone 
walls  laid  by  some  man  whose  heart  beat  high  with 
hope  and  who  wrought  at  his  work  with  conscien- 
tious care  because  he  felt  the  artist's  pride  in  his 
labors  and  deemed  that  he  built  for  children's 
children.  I  hope  that  he  laid  down  his  good  gray- 
head  at  the  last  secure  in  his  faith  in  the  land  he 
owned.  But  his  son  could  never  know  his  father's 
steadfast  faith.  He  knew  that  once  the  fertile 
lands  of  the  great  corn-belt  states  began  to  pour 
their  agricultural  wealth  into  the  world,  the  old 
regime  in  the  East  must  pass  forever.  The  open- 
ing up  of  the  Mississippi  Basin  marked  the  end  of 
an  era  in  much  of  the  old  East,  and  one  of  our  yet 
unsolved  problems  is  the  readjustment  of  the  eco- 
nomic and  social  ills  that  followed. 

I  am  thinking  now  of  an  old  farmstead  which  is 
locally  famous  for  its  walls.  It  was  only  a  poor 
thin  farm  at  best,  skirting  the  narrow  valley  of  a 
little  creek  and  running  far  up  against  the  steep 
and  rocky  hillsides.  It  is  such  a  farm  as  can  never 
give  more  than  narrow  opportunities  and  then 
only  as  the  result  of  grinding  toil.  Yet  on  this 
farm  a  man  spent  a  long  life,  and  when  he  died, 
he  left  it  fenced  by  high,  smooth,  straight  stone 
walls.  It  seems  pathetic  that  a  man  should  so — as 
we  may  be  tempted  to  say — have  wasted  his  life. 
Yet  perhaps  for  him  there  was  compensation  in 
his  work.  He  was  a  patient  sober  man  of  charac- 
ter and  ideals.    I  know  that  men  called  him  a  good 


70  THE  COW 

neighbor.  I  know  that  according  to  his  vision  he 
loved  and  labored  for  the  tiny  country  church. 
We  cannot  tell  but  that  he  worked  out  what  was 
for  him  a  sound  and  satisfactory  philosophy  of 
life  as  he  patiently  and  skillfully  piled  stone  on 
stone.  But  he  is  gone,  and  strangers  carelessly 
till  his  loved  acres,  and  the  walls  are  falling  down 
with  the  years  and  no  man  rebuilds  them,  and 
therein  lies  the  pathos  of  his  story. 

This  much  remains,  however,  that  a  stone  wall 
can  never  become  common  or  mean.  While  it 
stands,  it  is  a  monument  to  the  industry  and  abid- 
ing faith  of  a  strong  man,  and  even  when  it  falls 
it  is  a  part  of  the  landscape  and  not  a  scar  on  it. 
Gradually  Nature  hides  it  beneath  shrubs  and  run- 
ning vines,  and  slowly  by  geologic  law  it  sinks 
back  into  the  bosom  of  the  earth  from  which  it 
came. 

Some  things  in  especial  measure  breathe  the  ro- 
mance and  poetry  and  magic  of  life  on  the  land. 
Such  are  rows  of  weather-beaten  droning  bee- 
hives under  gnarled  and  ancient  apple  trees,  and 
running  streams  with  cows  standing  knee  deep  in 
clear  pools  and  long  shady  lanes  with  many  beaten 
cow-paths,  and  boys  calling  the  cows  when  the  sun 
is  low,  and  sunken  mossy  stone  walls,  and  these 
last  are  the  best  and  richest. 


VII 

THE  COW  TRIBES 

In  those  far-off  centuries  when  herds  of  wild 
cattle  ranged  through  the  forests  of  northern 
Europe,  the  individuals  were  presumably  very- 
much  alike  in  type,  size,  and  color  markings.  It 
seems  to  be  a  law  of  biology  that  when  any  species 
of  plant  or  animal  exists  for  a  long  period  of  time 
under  an  unchanging  environment,  a  general  uni- 
formity of  type  results.  For  example,  among  wild 
deer,  the  American  bison,  robins,  chipmunks  or 
woodchucks,  with  rare  exceptions,  every  individual 
of  a  species  is  so  like  every  other  member  that  one 
exact  zoological  description  suffices  for  all.  On 
the  other  hand,  when  the  environment,  or  the  daily 
life  conditions,  is  changed,  immediately  the  ten- 
dency to  mutations  is  exhibited,  the  appearance  of 
individuals  possessing  new  or  unusual  characters. 
The  cow  has  been  wonderfully  altered  under  do- 
mestication, partly  because  new  traits  and  charac- 
ters have  come  unconsciously  in  response  to  new 
surroundings,  partly  because  her  master  and 
owner  has  encouraged  and  preserved  these  new 
developments  by  keeping  and  rearing  especially 

71 


I 


72  THE  COW 

the  calves  of  those  cows  that,  judged  by  his  stan- 
dards, seemed  to  him  best  or  most  desirable. 
i  In  discussing  the  theory  of  breeding  and  the 
results  that  have  been  attained,  we  have  always 
assumed  that  these  changes  have  come  about  al- 
most wholly  through  the  conscious  selection  and 
agency  of  man.  It  is  altogether  probable,  how- 
ever, that  a  very  large  part  of  the  modification  of 
our  domestic  animals  has  resulted  from  a  natural 
biologic  selection  rather  than  from  the  deliberate 
methods  and  plans  of  the  breeder.  An  excellent 
example  of  how  Nature  works  ( and  sometimes  con- 
trariwise) with  man  in  his  breeding  operations  is 
the  little  Kerry  cow  or  the  tiny  Shetland  pony. 
These  animals  are  practically  dwarfs,  not  because 
their  owners  have  systematically  selected  the  off- 
spring of  the  smallest  mothers,  but  rather  because 
of  a  law  that  runs  true  throughout  all  life.  The 
law  may  be  stated  thus:  "Where  the  food  supply 
is  scanty  and  uncertain,  the  size  of  organisms  tends 
to  decrease. '^ 

In  any  case,  there  are  on  our  American  farms 
today  about  twenty  different  breeds  of  cattle  which 
are  distinguished  from  each  other  not  only  by  size, 
form,  or  color  markings,  but  more  remarkably  by 
functions  as  well,  and  yet  all  of  them  must  ac- 
knowledge the  wdld  cow  of  Europe  as  a  common 
ancestress. 

The  larger  part  of  the  story  of  the  breeding  of 
the  cow  is  lost  in  the  unwritten  past.     Certain  it 


THE  COW  TRIBES  73 

is  that  in  the  days  when  man  was  still  a  nomad 
with  his  herds  and  long  before  he  had  any  ad- 
vanced civilization  or  written  records  or  even  tra- 
ditions of  his  work,  the  cow  had  already  been 
greatly  modified  from  the  wild  form  and  very  dis- 
tinct breed  types  had  arisen.  With  all  our  mod- 
ern science  and  biological  theories,  we  must  con- 
fess that  long  ago  there  were  simple-hearted  un- 
lettered pastoralists  who,  nevertheless,  were  con- 
structive breeders.  Within  the  last  two  centuries 
a  race  of  English  and  Scotch  farmers,  Thomas 
Bakewell,  the  brothers  Charles  and  Robert  Colling, 
Thomas  Bates,  Thomas  Booth  and  his  sons  John 
and  Richard,  and  Amos  Cruickshank,  proved  to  be 
men  with  a  genius  for  judging  and  selecting  ani- 
mals and  endowed  with  a  patience  and  persistency 
of  purpose  which  enabled  them  to  accomplish  much 
in  that  scientific  art  where  haste  counts  for  noth- 
ing. The  first  and  perhaps  the  greatest  of  this 
line  of  breeders  was  Bakewell  (1725-1795).  He 
pursued  the  improvement  of  cattle,  horses,  sheep 
and  swine  with  vast  enthusiasm  and  with  a  success 
that  in  his  own  lifetime  was  recognized  throughout 
England.  He  seems  to  have  possessed  an  almost 
uncanny  skill  in  his  selection  of  animals  for  mat- 
ing, and  he  boldly  practiced  and  attributed  much 
of  his  success  to  his  use  of  the  principles  of  close 
inbreeding  in  order  to  fix  desirable  characters. 

After  all,  however,  there  is  hardly  a  breed  of 
cattle  today  that  represents  the  deliberate  crea- 


74  THE  COW 

tion  of  any  man  or  group  of  men.  Our  modem  con- 
tribution has  been  in  the  improvement  of  types 
already  established  and  in  the  keeping  of  exact 
records  of  ancestry  and  production  through  the 
various  registry  associations  and  herd-books.  As 
elsewhere  in  our  agriculture,  we  have  only  builded 
on  the  foundations  laid  by  forgotten  men. 

It  has  sometimes  been  held  as  a  reproach  to  our 
new  world  agriculture  that  we  have  originated 
and  developed  very  few  distinctively  American 
breeds  of  domestic  animals.  This  statement  is  not 
true  regarding  swine,  for  our  most  popular  breeds, 
as  Duroc-Jersey,  Poland-China,  Chester-White, 
Cheshire,  and  others,  ai'e  strictly  of  American 
origin.  Also  the  light  fast  type  of  harness  horse 
is  largely  an  American  product.  On  the  other 
hand,  all  of  our  many  breeds  of  sheep  are  old 
European  strains  unless  we  assume  that  the  fine- 
wooled  sheep,  the  Merino,  has  been  so  modified 
under  American  conditions  that  it  deserves  to  be 
ranked  as  a  native  breed.  Every  breed  of  cattle, 
with  the  exception  of  the  little  known  French- 
Canadian  and  two  or  three  very  unimportant 
polled  types  of  older  breeds,  are  of  European 
origin. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  very  many  diverse  fami- 
lies of  cattle  in  Europe  represent  not  so  much  a 
definite  conscious  effort  to  build  up  a  strain  ac- 
cording to  certain  preconceived  ideals  and  stand- 
ards, but  rather  they  stand  for  races  that  have 


'o 


i) 


THE  COW  TEIBES  75 

been  developed  within  limited  geographical  ranges 
largely  because  there  has  been  so  little  communi- 
cation between  different  sections.  It  has  been  said 
that  almost  every  English  shire  had  its  own  pe- 
culiar breed.  This  could  never  have  occurred  in 
America  where  there  is  a  great  inter-state  cattle 
trade  which  insures  a  very  general  distribution 
and  exchange  of  breed  types  over  the  entire  coun- 
try. 

There  is  nothing  occult  or  mysterious  about  the 
establishment  of  a  brand  new  breed  of  any  of  our 
domestic  animals.  Some  one  may  have  in  mind 
certain  functions  or  form  or  more  likely  merely 
fanciful  characters  or  color  not  possessed  by  any 
breed  and  which  he  thinks  are  worth  perpetuating. 
Probably  he  will  own  or  have  in  mind  certain  in- 
dividuals that  approximate  the  desired  type.  Our 
farm  animals  are  rather  plastic  anyway,  much 
more  so  than  the  wild  forms.  A  few  generations 
of  careful  selection  and  mating  together  with  the 
culling  out  of  those  specimens  that  fail  to  be  in 
line  with  the  desired  forms,  will  suffice  to  give 
them  a  certain  uniformity  and  fixity  of  type.  He 
may  then  interest  some  other  men  in  the  same  proj- 
ect, incorporate  as  an  association  or  club, .  adopt 
a  set  of  rules  and  standards,  appoint  a  secretary 
to  be  the  official  recorder  of  data  relative  to  pedi- 
grees and  other  matters,  begin  the  publication  of  a 
herd-book,  and  a  new  breed  is  launched  on  the 
world.    If  in  addition  to  this,  those  interested  can 


76  THE  COW 

promote  the  sale  of  their  animals  at  substantial 
prices,  the  success  of  the  new  venture  is  assured. 
Such  fiat  breed  creation  is  occasionally  pursued 
among  our  farm  animals  and  very  frequently  in 
the  case  of  poultry.  It  must  be  said  that  such 
efforts  serve  no  useful  practice  and  should  be  dis- 
couraged. We  have  now  all  the  types  of  farm 
animals  that  can  be  of  any  real  use.  A  consider- 
able proportion  of  those  we  already  have  exist 
mainly  for  the  purpose  of  winning  premiums  at 
fairs  and  selling  stock  to  those  misguided  agricul- 
turists who  continually  seek  some  new  thing.  It 
will  certainly  be  wiser  to  spend  time  and  energy 
on  further  improvement  of  our  standard  types 
rather  than  to  seek  to  add  to  their  number. 

It  is  rather  interesting  and  surprising  to  note 
that  as  far  as  the  exact  recording  and  registry  of 
pedigrees  is  concerned,  the  systematic  improve- 
ment of  the  beef  breeds  considerably  antedates 
that  of  dairy  cattle.  The  oldest  live-stock  registi'y 
in  the  world  is  the  Shorthorn  herd-book,  the  first 
volume  being  published  by  George  Coats  of  York- 
shire, England,  in  1S22,  and  authentic  private  rec- 
ords of  Shorthorn  pedigree  date  back  as  far  as 
1750.  If  exact  geneological  records  extending 
across  many  generations  are  the  test,  some  families 
of  Shorthorns  are  the  aristocrats  of  the  bovine 
world  because  the  herd-books  of  the  other  breeds 
were  founded  much  later.  The  first  Hereford  herd- 
book  goes  back  to  1846.    The  oldest  American  live- 


THE  COW  TEIBES  77 

stock  registry  is  the  Ayrshire  record  established 
in  New  England  in  1863.  The  Jersey  and  Hol- 
stein  records  were  began  about  1872  and  the 
Guernsey  in  1877.  The  herd-books  of  the  minor 
breeds  are  of  still  more  recent  origin.  The  whole 
usefulness  of  the  system  of  pedigrees  and  regis- 
tration depends  on  records  rigorously  supervised 
and  honestly  kept  and  which  are  correct  to  the 
best  of  human  ability.  In  the  end,  the  whole  sys- 
tem rests  on  the  conscientious  honesty  of  the  indi- 
vidual breeder.  The  temptations  and  opportuni- 
ties to  substitute  and  to  falsify  records  in  various 
ways  are  great  and  detection  is  well-nigh  impos- 
sible. Occasional  scandals  have  been  brought  to 
light,  but,  on  the  whole,  the  number  is  few  and 
the  associations  have  dealt  severely  with  the 
guilty.  There  is  no  reason  to  question  the  essen- 
tial correctness  of  our  live-stock  records. 

The  breeds  of  cattle  are  usually  classified  into 
three  groups:  the  special  beef  kinds,  the  special 
dairy  breeds,  and  the  general  or  dual-purpose  sorts^ 
The  theory  regarding  the  last  is  that  they  will  give 
fairly  profitable  returns  as  daiiy  animals,  and  in 
addition  their  male  calves  will  make  good  feeding 
steers,  while  they  themselves  will  make  a  fair  car- 
cass of  beef  when  their  dairy  days  are  over.  The 
best  comment  on  this  theory  is  that  not  one  of  the 
so-called  general-purpose  breeds  has  ever  won  any 
wide  popularity.  Probably  the  nearest  approach 
is  in  certain  strains  of  milking  Shorthorns. 


78  THE  COW 

(  Of  our  nearly  twenty  breeds,  only  eight  can  be 
regarded  as  important  so  far  as  numbers  are  con- 
cerned. The  four  beef  breeds  that  really  compete 
for  supremacy  in  the  corn-belt  country  and  that 
furnish  the  T-bone  steak  and  prime  ribs  of  beef 
for  a  hungry  world  are  the-  Shorthorn,  Hereford, 
Aberdeen-Angus  and  Galloway.  There  are  four 
great  special-purpose  dairy  breeds,  all  widely 
known  and  possessing  individuals  of  the  highest 
excellence.  These  are  the  Holstein,  Jersey,  Guern- 
sey and  Ayrshire.  ~) 
t^  The  Holstein,  coming  from  Holland,  is  pre- 
eminently the  great  milk  breed,  her  particular 
characteristic  being  the  ability  to  give  large 
amounts  of  milk  containing  a  rather  low  percen- 
tage of  butter-fat.  Under  the  conditions  and  basis 
of  payment  that  prevails  in  the  liquid  milk  market, 
this  big  black-and-white  cow  threatens  to  drive 
other  breeds  from  the  field.  She  has,  on  the  w^hole, 
remained  especially  the  cow  of  the  practical  work- 
ing farmer  rather  than  the  rich  man's  hobby.  She 
has  large  size,  vigor,  hardiness  and  ability  to 
utilize  profitably  great  quantities  of  rough  forage ; 
and  while  her  milk  may  lack  the  percentage  of  fat 
suitable  for  the  most  discriminating  markets,  she 
is  all  in  all  the  most  popular  breed  in  the  jvorld. 
Perhaps  we  may  paraphrase  the  famous  expression 
regarding  the  Concord  grape  and  say  that  she  is 
the  cow  for  the  millions. 

It  is  remarkable  that  a  tiny  group  of  islands  in 


THE  COW  TEIBES  79 

the  English  Channel  should  have  given  to  the 
world  two  of  its  most  widely  known  races  of  cattle. 
It  is  said  that  for  centuries  no  foreign  cattle  have 
been  imported  to  these  islands  and  this  natural 
isolation  for  a  great  period  of  time  has  resulted  in 
two  breeds,  the  Jersey  and  the  Guernsey,  which 
are  of  a  very  distinct  type.  They  are  alike  in  that 
both  give  milk  containing  an  unusually  high  per- 
centage of  butter-fat  and,  especially  in  the  case  of 
the  Guernsey,  with  an  abundance  of  yellow  coloring 
matter  (lactochrome),but  in  conformation  and  gen- 
eral appearance  the  two  breeds  are  not  closely  akin. 

The  Ayrshires  from  southwest  Scotland,  Robert 
Burns'  country,  are  in  character,  size  and  quality  of 
milk  intermediate  between  the  Holstein  and  the 
Channel  Island  breeds.  They  have  been  distrib- 
uted over  almost  the  whole  dairy  world  and  have 
never  lacked  for  warm  admirers.  The  breed  has 
some  individuals  that  are  excellent  examples  of 
dairy  conformation,  and  they  are  renowned  for 
their  perfectly  shaped  udders ;  yet  they  seem  never 
to  have  attained  as  wide  popularity  as  the  other 
breeds.  Possibly  this  may  be  because  they  are 
a  little  on  the  order  of  general -purpose  dairy 
cattle.  It  is  sometimes  stated  that  no  other  cow 
will  give  as  good  returns  from  the  grazing  of  steep 
and  rocky  pastures.  The  Ayrshire  has  been  es- 
pecially popular  in  the  cheese  districts  of  Jeffer- 
son and  St.  Lawrence  counties  in  New  York. 

A  true  breeder  of  beef  cattle  will  not  be  in- 


80  THE  COW 

terested  in  their  dairy  qualities  beyond  the  point 
of  insuring  that  the  dam  will  give  enough  milk 
to  rear  a  good  calf  by  suckling.  The  conformation 
and  temperament  which  give  a  heavy  loin  and  a 
meaty  thigh,  together  with  early  maturity  and  the 
tendency  to  accumulate  body  fat,  is  directly  an- 
tagonistic to  great  dairy  performance.  The  story 
comes  down  to  us  how  Booth,  the  great  Shorthorn 
breeder,  developed  a  strain  of  cows  in  which  the 
milk-making  function  was  almost  lost,  and  in  his 
stables  a  calf  stood  between  two  cows  because  one 
could  not  properly  support  her  calf.  When  he  was 
an  old  man  and  showing  visitors  through  his 
stables,  it  was  his  pleasure  to  walk  down  the  long 
alleys  behind  those  great  mountains  of  flesh  and 
slapping  their  broad  rumps  cry,  "Gentlemen: 
What  does  a  few  quarts  of  milk  from  a  cow  amount 
to  anyway?" 

A  man's  success  or  failure  as  a  dairyman  em- 
phatically does  not  depend  on  his  choice  of  a  breed, 
assuming,  of  course,  that  he  chooses  one  of  the 
special  dairy  kinds.  The  different  individuals  of 
a  breed  differ  far  more  from  each  other  than  do 
the  breeds  as  a  whole.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  the  breed  is  relatively  unimportant  as  com- 
pared with  markets,  soils, 'rations  and  stable  care. 
It  is  of  supreme  importance,  however,  that  he  have 
good  individuals  of  some  breed,  and  possibly  even 
more,  that  he  believe  in  and  love  his  business  and 
be  a  student  of  it. 


THE  COW  TEIBES  81 

Nevertheless,  it  is  possible  to  lay  down  certain 
principles  that  may  be  useful  in  helping  one  to 
make  a  choice  of  some  breed  to  which  to  devote 
one's  energies.  If  a  man  is  producing  market  milk 
under  the  usual  commercial  conditions  and  basis  of 
payment,  particularly  if  it  be  a  market  which  buys 
on  the  basis  of  moderate  costs  rather  than  the  high 
quality  of  the  product,  then  the  black-and-white 
Holstein  will  probably  be  best  suited  for  his  pur- 
pose, especially  if  his  farm  is  fairly  level  and  fertile 
and  his  pastures  not  too  scanty.  The  Holstein 
cow  was  developed  on  the  best  pastures  in  the 
world  where  ''when  she  wanted  a  bite  of  grass,  she 
got  a  whole  mouthful."  When  it  comes  to  climb- 
ing steep  and  rocky  hillsides  and  wandering  far 
to  crop  a  lean  herbage,  the^  Holstein  is  handicapped 
as  compared  with  the  lighter  and  more  active 
breeds. 

On  the  other  hand,  for  tne  economical  produc- 
tion of  butter-fat  rather  than  fluid  milk  or  for  the 
supplying  of  a  discriminating  market  milk  trade, 
one  of  the  Channel  Island  breeds  will  probably 
be  a  wiser  choice. 

The  Ayrshire  must  not  be  forgotten  in  this  list. 
In  her  adaptability  she  really  falls  midway  be- 
tween the  other  two  classes.  Wherever  the  Scotch- 
man has  gone  into  the  far  corners  of  the  earth,  he 
has  taken  his  cow,  and  at  her  best  she  is  worthy  of 
the  race  that  created  her. 


VIII 
THE  KEARING  OF  THE  CALF 

As  A  rule,  it  will  be  best  if  the  calf  can  be  born 
in  the  autumn,  September  or  October.  There  are 
sound  reasons  of  good  dairy  management  why  this 
is  usually  best.  For  one  thing,  it  brings  the  largest 
production  of  milk  during  the  winter  months  when 
prices  are  much  higher  than  in  summer.  This 
plan  also  allows  the  cows  to  stand  dry  and  hence 
to  need  very  little  attention  during  the  stress  of 
midsummer  farm  activities,  no  small  consideration 
as  every  dairyman  knows.  Then  again  the  fall- 
born  calf  is  likely  to  receive  better  care  and  at- 
tention and  to  make  a  more  satisfactory  growth. 
The  spring  calf,  even  with  the  best  of  intentions 
on  the  part  of  the  owner,  is  too  likely  at  times  to 
be  neglected  in  the  rush  of  soil  preparation  and 
haying  and  harvest.  The  greatest  enemy  to  thrift 
in  a  calf  is  not  fairly  low  winter  temperatures,  but 
rather  the  flies  and  heat  of  July  and  August. 

If  the  weather  is  warm  and  dry,  there  is  no  bet- 
ter place  for  the  calf  to  be  born  than  on  a  clean 
grassy  pasture.  Usually  the  other  members  of  the 
herd  will  display  very  little  interest  in  the  event. 

82 


THE  REARING  OF  THE  CALF  83 

During  much  of  the  year,  however,  a  roomy  well- 
bedded  box-stall  should  be  provided.  The  period 
of  gestation  in  cows  is  about  285  days,  but  a  varia- 
tion  of  two  weeks  in  either  direction  is  not  un- 
common. Just  a  day  or  two  preceding  parturi- 
tion, certain  marked  physical  evidences  appear 
which  enable  one  accustomed  to  observe  cows  to 
know  that  calving  is  about  to  occur.  The  most 
marked  of  these  is  the  relaxation  of  the  pelvic 
ligaments  and  the  abundant  secretion  of  milk  in 
the  udder.  Twelve  or  twenty-four  hours  pre- 
viously, the  teats  will  fill  with  milk  to  such  an  ex- 
tent as  to  become  somewhat  firm  and  rigid  and  the 
coming  of  the  calf  will  then  not  be  long  delayed. 
Bather  close  watch  should  now  be  kept  in  order  to 
be  prepared  to  render  assistance  in  the  occasional 
cases  in  which  it  is  needed.  Ordinarily,  however, 
the  youngster  comes  into  the  world  with  very  little 
trouble,  and  if  the  mother  lives  up  to  the  customs 
of  her  race  she  has  within  an  hour  very  thoroughly 
cleaned  her  baby  with  her  tongue  (the  bovine 
equivalent  of  a  bath),  it  has  taken  its  first  meal 
from  her  full  udder  and  curled  up  and  gone  to 
sleep.  Maternity  among  cows  seems  to  be  a  pass- 
ing incident  rather  than  a  great  event. 

In  the  typical  scheme  of  beef  production,  there 
is  really  no  such  problem  as  rearing  the  calf.  It 
is  merely  allowed  to  remain  with  its  mother  and 
she  brings  it  up  strictly  according  to  ancestral 
training  and  generally  avoids  all  trouble  of  indi- 


84  THE  COW 

gestion  or  other  ills.  But  under  the  approved 
management  of  the  modern  dairy  herd,  all  this  is 
changed.  The  calf  is  torn  from  its  mother  for- 
ever when  only  twenty-four  or  forty-eight  hours 
old,  is  taught  to  drink  its  milk  out  of  a  tin  pail 
instead  of  nursing  from  its  mother's  udder,  and 
after  a  few  weeks  at  longest  it  is  fed  skim-milk 
instead  of  the  rich  creamy  fluid  that  its  dam 
secrete.  It  is  no  wonder  that  indigestion  is  some- 
times a  veritable  scourge  among  young  calves. 
The  real  marvel  is  that  they  do  not  all  die.  We 
do  incredible  violence  to  ever^^  principle  of  calf 
hygiene.  Nature  provided  that  the  food  for  the 
calf  must  be  vei-y  slowly  drawn  from  the  mother 
and  abundantly  mixed  with  saliva  in  the  course 
of  suckling.  Moreover,  it  was  always  at  exactly 
the  correct  temperature  and  measured  up  to  the 
highest  standards  of  bacteriological  cleanliness, 
and  was  taken  in  small  quantities  many  times  a 
day.  We  cause  the  calf  to  dump  a  twelve-hour 
supply  of  milk  into  its  stomach  at  one  time  in  a 
few  big  gulps,  and,  moreover,  the  temperature  is 
generally  too  low.  Very  frequently  the  feeding 
pail  is  seeded  with  every  imaginable  variety  of 
germs.  In  addition  to  all  this,  we  feed  too  much. 
The  calf  will  thrive  better  if  it  is  never  allowed 
to  stuff  itself  to  repletion,  if  it  is  fed  only  enough 
milk  so  that  it  is  still  a  little  hungi^  and  eager  for 
more.     Perhaps  the  nursing  calf  may  be  allowed 


THE  BEARING  OF  THE  CALF  85 

to  gorge  itself  with  aU  the  milk  it  can  hold,  but 
this  means  disaster  when  artificially  reared. 

The  gospel  of  calf  feeding  may  be  stated  in  this 
way :  Feed  moderate  quantities  of  milk  at  frequent 
intervals  at  about  blood  heat  and  out  of  a  clean 
and  scalded  pail.  Probably  the  ideal  would  be  to 
feed  a  teacup  full  of  milk  a  dozen  times  a  day, 
but  three  or  perhaps  four  times  is  about  the  limit 
under  the  conditions  of  practical  dairy  manage- 
ment. The  amount  that  may  be  safely  fed  will 
vary  through  wide  limits  according  to  the  size  and 
vigor  of  the  calf,  but  for  the  first  week  from  two 
to  four  quarts  a  day  will  be  enough.  For  the  first 
ten  days  or  two  weeks  of  the  youngster's  life  it 
should  be  fed  whole  milk,  that  is  unskimmed  milk, 
fresh  from  its  mother  or  some  other  cow.  The 
more  vigorous  and  hearty  the  calf,  the  sooner  we 
may  begin  to  substitute  some  skim-milk  until  at 
three  to  five  weeks  old  it  will  receive  skim-milk 
only. 

After  the  calf  is  a  few  days  old,  it  should  have 
before  it  a  little  lock  of  bright  early  cut  hay,  pref- 
erably clover  or  alfalfa,  and  also  a  box  with  a 
handful  of  ground  grain.  A  mixture  of  equal 
parts  of  wheat  middlings  and  ground  oats,  to- 
gether with  ten  to  fifteen  per  cent  of  oil-meal 
(ground  flax-seed  cake)  will  make  an  excellent 
grain  ration.  It  is  surprising  how  quickly  a  vigor- 
ous calf  will  begin  to  nibble  a  little  hay  and  lick 


86  THE  COW 

at  the  meal,  and  at  two  weeks  old  we  may  find  her 
busily  and  happily  chewing  her  little  cud  quite 
after  the  manner  of  her  dam.  Once  a  calf  begins 
to  eat  freely  of  solid  food  the  dangers  of  indiges- 
tion and  bowel  trouble  are  largely  over.  Milk  may 
then  be  fed  within  any  reasonable  limits  that  the 
supply  will  permit,  and  no  other  food  equals  it  for 
rapid  growth  and  for  putting  an  animal  into  the 
best  condition.  Another  matter  easily  forgotton 
and  yet  important  is  to  see  that  there  is  provided 
an  abundance  of  bedding.  Calves  will  not  thrive 
in  a  damp  and  dirty  stall. 

The  autumn-bom  calf  will  be  ready  to  go  to  pas- 
ture as  soon  as  the  grass  is  plentiful  the  next 
spring.  Some  grain  and  shelter  from  flies  during 
the  first  summer  is  the  ideal,  but  it  may  not  be 
practicable  to  provide  these,  Cvspecially  if  we  are 
dependent  on  back  or  outlying  pastures. 

In  the  case  of  pure-bred,  high-class  animals, 
when  it  is  desirable  to  secure  the  greatest  possible 
growth  and  when  economy  is  a  secondary  con- 
sideration, it  may  be  wisest  to  bara-feed  the  calf 
for  the  first  year  and  not  depend  on  pasture.  It 
must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  this  is  an 
expensive  system  and  on  most  farms  we  should  ex- 
pect the  calf  to  get  its  living  to  a  considerable 
extent  from  pasture.  The  spring-bom  calf,  how- 
ever, would  better  spend  its  first  summer  in  the 
bam,  because  if  turned  to  grass  when  only  a  few 
months  old  the  withdrawal  of  the  milk,  together 


THE  BEARING  OF  THE  CALF  87 

with  the  heat  and  flies,  will  result  in  a  practical 
cessation  of  growth  and  possibly  permanent  in- 
jury. There  is  no  period  when  liberal  feeding  pays 
better  than  with  young  animals.  One  of  our  agri- 
cultural barbarisms  that  still  survives  is  the  idea 
that  young  heifers  may  properly  "rough  it" 
through  the  first  two  years  of  life.  This  is  a  great 
mistake,  because  the  first  requisite  of  a  good  dairy 
animal  is  the  ability  to  utilize  large  quantities  of 
food,  and  we  should  lay  the  foundations  for  a 
vigorous  digestion  by  liberal  feeding  during  early 
life.  In  a  general  way,  the  grain  food  for  young 
animals  should  be  of  some  bulky  nature  rather 
than  of  a  heavy  and  concentrated  type.  Nothing 
will  be  better  than  the  old  stand-by,  a  mixture  of 
wheat  bran  and  ground  oats.  Wheat  bran  is  es- 
pecially indicated  because  of  the  large  proportion 
of  phosphorus  and  lime  which  it  contains.  These 
materials  are  the  basis  of  the  bones,  and  it  is  very 
desirable  to  encourage  skeletonal  development  in 
the  young  heifer  rather  than  excessive  fatness. 

If  well  grown,  the  heifer  may  be  bred  when  fif- 
teen to  eighteen  months  old.  She  will  then  drop 
her  first  calf  at  two  years  to  twenty-seven  months 
of  age.  We  are  often  told  that  "Nature  is  a  wise 
Old  Dame'^  and  that  she  manages  everything  about 
right.  Unfortunately  when  left  to  herself,  she  does 
not  always  manage  this  matter  well,  because  very 
frequently  the  heifer  will  become  a  mother  alto- 
gether too  young,  when  not  yet  half  grown,  the 


88  THE  COW 

result  being  that  she  gives  but  little  milk  and 
will  be  very  late  in  coming  to  maturity.  At  the 
same  time,  it  is  generally  agreed  that  to  defer  the 
first  calf  too  late  is  a  mistake.  The  heifer's  busi- 
ness in  life  is  to  bear  calves  and  yield  milk,  and 
it  is  well  if  her  development  along  these  lines  be- 
gins before  she  is  too  mature. 


IX 
THE  CARE  OF  THE  MILKING  HERD 

School-boy  debating  societies  have  long 
wrestled  with  the  time-honored  query  as  to  whether 
the  pen  was  mightier  than  the  sword  or  water  more 
destructive  than  fire.  So  men  of  more  mature 
years  have  debated  which  was  more  important,  to 
have  good  cows  or  to  have  them  w^ell  cared  for. 
It  is  breed  versus  feed.  The  obvious  reply  is  that 
both  must  go  together  if  the  business  of  dairying 
is  to  be  profitable.  Men  do  not,  however,  always 
act  according  to  this  truth.  Sometimes  we  find 
herds  of  excellent  breeding  where  the  food  supply 
and  comfort  of  the  animals  are  neglected.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  not  unusual  to  find  men  who  are 
good  caretakers  but  who  forget  that  no  amount  of 
good  food  can  secure  high  production  from  an  in- 
ferior cow. 

The  care  of  cattle  may  be  classified  under:  (a) 
Factors  of  comfort,  such  as  comfortable  stalls^ 
protection  from  inclement  weather,  suitable  stable 
temperatures,  water  supply  and  protection  from 
insect  pests;  (b)  factors  of  the  food  supply;  (c) 
factors  of  dairy  management. 

89 


90  THE  COW 

Good  dairymen  have  always  recognized  that  ease 
and  comfort  and  content  on  the  part  of  the  cows 
are  great  factors  in  profitable  milk  production. 
The  ideal  would  be  an  individual  box-stall,  say  ten 
feet  square,  for  every  cow  where  she  might  freely 
move  around  or  lie  stretched  out  at  perfect  ease 
while  she  chewed  her  cud  and  manufactured  milk. 
Unfortunately  this  system  occupies  barn  room  so 
lavishly  and  uneconomically  and  is  so  inconvenient 
and  extravagant  of  bedding  if  decent  cleanliness 
is  to  be  maintained,  that  it  is  almost  never  fol- 
lowed in  large  herds  as  a  regular  practice.  How- 
ever, nearly  all  breeders  of  pure-bred  cows  who 
are  making  advanced  registry  records  and  wish  to 
secure  the  last  possible  ounce  of  milk  without 
counting  the  cost,  find  that  they  attain  the  maxi- 
mum results  by  giving  each  cow  the  freedom  of 
her  separate  box-stall.  Of  course,  on  every  dairy 
farm  there  ought  to  be  a  few  box-stalls  for  cows 
needing  particular  attention  and  especially  for 
those  about  to  calve. 

The  cow  is  probably  less  sensitive  to  fairly  low 
temperatures  than  we  have  sometimes  been  led  to 
think.  Thousands  of  years  ago  her  ancestors 
passed  the  fairly  severe  winters  of  northern  Europe 
with  no  shelter  other  than  that  afforded  by  the 
forests.  As  long  as  she  has  a  dry  coat  and  a  dry 
bed,  she  probably  prefers  a  cool  rather  than  a  warm 
and  stuffy  stable.  Rain  worries  her  not  at  all  until 
the  cold  storms  of  autumn  come  on,   when  she 


THE  CARE  OF  THE  MILKING  HERD        91 

should  be  housed  at  night  or  in  very  unpleasant 
weather. 

The  old  idea  of  dairymen  was  that  the  cow 
should  be  given  an  opportunity  for  plenty  of  exer- 
cise around  the  barnyard  thronghout  the  winter. 
Today  practice  has  veered  to  the  other  extreme, 
and  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  cows  that  are  never 
released  from  the  stanchion  from  November  to 
May.  It  may  be  a  question  for  debate  as  to  the 
ultimate  effect  on  offspring  and  constitutional 
^igor,  but  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  cattle 
will  give  excellent  dairy  production  under  such 
close  confinement. 

Unquestionably,  flies  and  other  insect  pests  are 
a  very  serious  drawback  to  cow  comfort  during 
midsummer  and  early  autumn.  They  are  annoyed 
by  several  species  of  flies  and  gnats.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  note  that  about  the  year  1890  the  north- 
eastern states  received  a  new  fly  pest  never  ob- 
served until  that  time.  This  was  christened  the 
Texas  horn-fly,  the  popular  belief  being  that  it  was 
an  importation  from  that  state.  It  has  thriven 
marvelously  since  its  introduction  and  seems  to 
have  displaced  or  driven  out  what  we  very  un- 
scientifically called  the  "old-fashioned  cow-fly." 

The  bot-fly  or  ox-warble  lays  its  eggs  so  that  they 
are  taken  into  the  stomach  of  the  cow.  Later  the 
tiny  larva  burrows  through  the  body  of  its  host, 
making  a  long  migration  until  it  establishes  itself 
beneath  the  skin  of  the  back  where  it  passes  the 


92  THE  COW 

winter,  to  emerge  nearly  a  year  later  as  a  big  fat 
repulsive  grub.  Big  as  they  are,  they  do  not  seem 
to  cause  cattle  any  particular  annoyance.  It  may 
be  added  that  their  life  history  as  worked  out  by 
the  entomologists  is  one  of  the  most  marvelous  of 
Nature's  strange  miracles.  The  bot-fly  seems  to 
be  quite  local  in  its  distribution.  On  the  home 
pastures  at  Hillside  Farm  we  never  find  it,  but 
cattle  sent  to  an  outlying  pasture  two  miles  away 
are  sure  to  return  bearing  a  crop  of  bots  that  will 
become  prominent  in  late  winter. 

Occasionally  the  torment  from  insect  pests  be- 
comes so  maddening  that  the  whole  herd  will  start 
on  a  gallop  across  the  field,  each  cow  carrying  her 
tail  aloft  like  a  banner.  These  rushes  are  appar- 
ently a  desperate  effort  to  leave  behind  or  shake 
off  their  tormentors.  Fortunately  we  are  able  to 
give  cows  some  measure  of  relief  by  lightly  spray- 
ing the  body,  especially  the  parts  that  cannot  be 
reached  by  the  tail,  once  each  day  with  some  one  of 
the  numerous  commercial  fly  repellents.  An  ex- 
penditure of  fifty  cents  a  cow  each  season  for  time 
and  material  will  do  much  to  mitigate  an  annoy- 
ance that  is  very  costly  both  in  milk  and  flesh. 

Flies  disappear  after  a  few  sharp  frosts,  but  in 
winter  their  place  is  taken  by  two  or  more  species 
of  lice.  These  vermin  are  no  respecters  of  persons 
and  are  sometimes  troublesome  in  the  best  stables. 
They  may  become  so  bad  as  to  cause  cows  to  rub 
raw  and  bleeding  patches  on  the  skin  in  the  effort 


eg 


THE  CARE  OF  THE  MILKING  HEED        93 

to  relieve  the  intolerable  itching  and  sometimes 
may  hasten  the  death  of  unthrifty  and  poorly  fed 
calves.  Any  number  of  powders,  ointments  and 
washes  are  recommended  as  remedies,  and  most 
of  them  are  efficient  if  used  persistently. 

Another  factor  of  comfort  is  the  water  supply. 
It  must  be  confessed  that  cattle  are  in  no  way  fas- 
tidious as  to  their  drinking  place  and  often  seem 
quite  as  well  pleased  with  a  green  and  stagnant 
pool  as  with  a  running  brook  or  clear  spring. 
However,  a  good  water  supply  in  winter  is  of  the 
utmost  importance.  If  the  supply  is  a  trough  in 
the  barnyard,  it  should  be  warmed  enough  to  keep 
it  free  from  ice.  There  are  many  inexpensive  types 
of  water-tank  heaters  to  choose  from.  It  will,  how- 
ever, be  a  sound  investment  and  not  an  extrava- 
gance to  provide  a  system  of  automatic  individual 
drinking  buckets  for  the  stable.  A  cow  will  get 
along  by  drinking  a  great  quantity  of  water  (often 
from  70  to  100  pounds  a  day  when  on  dry  feed) 
once  or  twice  a  day,  but  when  forced  to  do  this  she 
is  doubtless  thirsty  much  of  the  time,  while  if  she 
has  it  available  she  will  take  a  sip  or  a  few  swal- 
lows at  very  frequent  intervals.  Milk  is  about  87 
per  cent  water,  and  there  is  no  other  constituent 
that  we  can  provide  so  cheaply.  However,  both 
statute  law  and  ethics  decree  that  it  can  be  added 
only  through  the  cow. 

Many  volumes  have  been  written  concerning  the 
feeding  of  animals  and  the  current  literature  of 


94  THE  COW 

the  subject,  both  in  popular  periodicals  and  in  re- 
search publications,  is  well-nigh  unlimited.  There- 
fore, a  few  broad  generalizations  will  be  sufficient, 
without  any  attempt  at  discussion. 

Wise  feeding  of  the  cow  must  consider  three  as- 
sociated factors.  Food  must  be  abundant,  palat- 
able, and  chosen  from  such  sources  and  in  such 
relative  amounts  that  it  will  supply  the  different 
classes  of  nutrients  in  such  proportions  as  will 
best  minister  to  the  needs  of  the  animals. 

This  is  a  simple  definition,  but  to  measure  up  to 
its  requirements  involves  practical  experience, 
technical  training  and  a  large  proportion  of  good 
cow-sense. 

Sometimes  we  talk  very  technically  and  at  much 
length  about  the  ^'balanced  ration.'^  What  we 
mean  is  a  ration  which  by  its  chemical  composition 
and  make-up  is  fitted  to  supply  all  the  require- 
ments of  the  animal.  It  is  now  just  about  a  half- 
century  since  the  principles  of  quantitative  chemi- 
cal analysis  began  to  be  applied  to  feeding  stuffs 
and  to  the  animal  body,  to  the  milk  and  also  to 
the  wastes  or  excreted  food  residues.  Some  one 
then  asked  a  most  simple  and  natural  question, 
"Ought  there  to  be  any  particular  relationship  be- 
tween what  we  feed  an  animal  and  the  product 
that  we  expect  to  derive  from  the  food?''  and  thus 
this  discussion  was  begun  and  surely  has  never 
been  allowed  to  lapse. 

The  broad  idea  of  the  balanced  ration  is  funda- 


THE  CARE  OF  THE  MILKING  HEED         95 

mentally  sound,  but  we  make  a  great  mistake  when 
we  try  to  convert  it  into  a  rigid  mathematical  for- 
mula. Successful  feeding  of  the  animal  is  not  only 
a  question  of  correct  relative  proportions  of  pro- 
tein, carbohydrates  and  fat,  but  also  of  economy 
measured  in  cost  in  cents  each  day.  It  is  more  a 
question  of  palatability  than  of  the  absolute  best 
theoretical  ration.  Animals  at  different  seasons 
and  localities  have  had  to  adapt  themselves  to  very 
wide  variations  in  diet,  and  fortunately  their  re- 
quirements are  rather  elastic.  Study  of  tables  of 
composition  and  digestibility  are  suggestive,  but 
we  must  not  forget  the  individuality  of  the  animal. 
The  more  we  consider  this  topic  of  feeding,  the 
more  clearly  we  come  to  understand  that  the  best 
rations  are  not  compounded  in  the  laboratory  but 
in  the  stable.  A  cow  must  eat  to  the  very  limit 
of  her  digestive  powers  if  she  is  to  do  her  best 
work.  She  must  gorge  herself  "as  full  as  a  tick," 
and  she  will  not  do  this  unless  her  food  fulfills  her 
ideas  of  toothsomeness.  Kations  may  be  skillfully 
compounded,  if  you  will,  exactly  to  conform  to  the 
Wolff-Lehmann  or  any  other  standard,  but  they 
must  also  be  compounded  with  experience  and  com- 
mon sense  and  a  close  and  sympathetic  study  of 
the  likes  and  dislikes  of  the  cow. 

There  are  two  fairly  distinct  types  of  dairying, 
so  far  .as  management  is  .concerned — "summer'' 
and  "winter."  The  dairying  of  our  fathers  was 
almost  wholly  of  the  former  type.    It  was  planned 


96  THE  COW 

to  have  the  cows  come  fresh  in  April  and  May,  so 
far  ds  possible,  and  to  depend  almost  wholly  on 
pasture  for  production.  The  barn  was  not  re- 
garded as  a  place  to  make  milk;  it  was  merely  a 
device  by  which  cows  were  maintained  alive  until 
spring.  Until  a  generation  ago  this  was  about  the 
only  dairying  known  except  within  the  milk-ship- 
ping radius  of  the  towns  and  cities  where  there 
was  an  insistent  demand  for  milk  throughout  the 
year. 

For  many  years  an  active  educational  propa- 
ganda has  urged  the  wisdom  of  producing  milk 
mainly  in  the  winter  rather  than  the  summer 
months.  In  the  main  the  arguments  are  sound. 
Winter  prices  are  substantially  higher,  and  it 
brings  the  larger  part  of  the  care  of  the  herd  in 
the  time  when  the  farm  labor  schedule  is  a  little 
less  strenuous  than  at  seed-time  and  harvest. 
Doubtless,  thoughtful  dairymen  will  more  and 
more  come  to  consider  the  period  beginning  in 
autumn  as  the  best  dairy  months. 

There  is  also  the  question  as  to  what  disposition 
shall  be  made  of  the  milk.  The  market  for  milk  is 
constantly  and  rapidly  broadening  and  there  are 
now  a  surprising  number  of  distinct  outlets.  These 
are  market  milk  (that  is,  milk  to  be  consumed  in 
the  natural  state),  butter,  cheese,  condensed  and 
evaporated  milk,  powdered  milk,  malted  milk,  ice- 
cream, milk  in  combination  with  chocolate,  and  a 
number  of  very  special  uses  such  as  prepared  in- 


THE  CARE  OF  THE  MILKING  HEED        97 

fants'  foods  and  various  proprietary  milk  bever- 
ages like  koumiss  and  bulgarzoon.  In  addition, 
there  are  a  large  number  of  commercial  chemical 
by-products  of  skim-milk. 

Of  these  uses,  market  milk  and  butter  are  by  far 
the  most  important.  Milk  for  cheese-making  in- 
cludes not  only  the  common  American  or  Cheddar 
cheese,  but  also  a  very  great  variety  of  so-called 
"fancy''  or  "soft"  cheeses,  such  as  Philadelphia 
Cream,  Neufchatel  and  Roquefort.  It  is  not  the 
purpose  of  this  little  book  to  attempt  any  discus- 
sion of  manufacturing  methods. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  in  the  South  and  in  all  sec- 
tions of  the  country  with  a  large  urban  population, 
milk  is  usually  worth  more  to  sell  as  market  milk 
than  it  is  for  manufacturing  purposes.  However, 
the  great  dairy  districts  remote  from  centers  of 
population  must  still  depend  on  the  commercial 
manufacturing  establishments  for  their  markets. 
Thus,  seven  states  produce  more  than  one-half  of 
our  total  butter. 

In  considering  the  question  of  markets,  one  point 
deserves  to  be  emphasized.  It  is  this :  The  dairy- 
man who  can  so  arrange  his  business  as  to  retain 
the  skim-milk  on  the  farm  may  not  get  as  many 
dollars  this  month  or  this  year,  but  he  will  have 
the  satisfaction  of  feeling  that  he  can  grow  calves 
and  pigs  which  means  the  maintenance  and  up- 
building of  the  dairy  herd  and  the  conservation  of 
soil  fertility.    This  is  the  factor  that  must  underlie 


98  THE  COW 

a  really  enduring  business.  The  writer  lives  in  a 
dairy  locality  within  two  miles  of  a  particularly 
advantageous  market  for  liquid  milk,  and  almost 
without  exception  the  milk  of  this  entire  region 
goes  to  supply  New  York  City.  We  almost  alone 
have  still  held  to  the  old  farm  custom  and  con- 
tinue to  skim  the  milk  at  home  and  to  sell  only 
cream  and  pork  and  to  raise  all  our  promising 
heifer  calves.  The  immediate  returns  may  not  be 
as  large  as  if  we  should  join  the  morning  proces- 
sion of  milk  rigs,  but  we  believe  that  the  future 
justifies  our  plan. 

Sound  dairy  management  is  a  matter  of  produc- 
tive cows,  convenient,  sanitary  and  comfortable 
barns  and  stables,  corn-fields  and  silos  and  hay 
from  the  grasses  or  better  from  the  legumes.  We 
do  well  to  maintain  the  herd  as  far  as  possible 
from  within  our  own  fence  lines,  but  in  addition 
we  shall  probably  find  it  necessary  to  purchase 
moderate  quantities  of  protein  concentrates. 

If  we  milk  more  than  ten  or  fifteen  cows,  it  will 
be  wise  to  add  the  milking  machine  to  our  equip- 
ment. That  it  is  a  most  successful  saver  of  human 
labor  no  longer  admits  of  debate.  There  is  the 
disadvantage,  however,  that  we  do  largely  lose  con« 
tact  with  our  cows  and  the  good  custom  of  weigh- 
ing milk  and  keeping  records  is  almost  certain  to 
fall  into  disuse. 


X 

THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  HERD 

This  little  book  makes  no  pretense  of  being  in 
any  way  a  treatise  on  veterinaiy  medicine,  but 
merely  proposes  to  mention  rather  than  discuss  a 
few  of  the  most  important  ailments  of  our  dairy- 
herds.  Many  of  the  diseases  of  humans  have  their 
almost  exact  counterpart  among  bovines.  A  num- 
ber of  specific  infectious  diseases  are  confined  to 
cattle  and  at  least  one,  anthrax,  is  of  peculiar  in- 
terest, because  it  is  communicable  to  man,  not  fre- 
quently with  fatal  results.  The  five  outstanding 
troubles  that  to  some  extent  are  always  with  us 
and  that  we  can  hardly  hope  to  escape  sooner  or 
later  are  calf  scours,  epidemic  or  contagious  abor- 
tion, parturient  apoplexy  or  in  the  language  of  the 
stable  "milk  fever,''  bovine  tuberculosis  and  garget. 

The  first  two  are  not  well  understood,  and  while 
the  literature  of  these  diseases  is  most  voluminous, 
we  seem  to  have  no  general  agreement  as  to  either 
the  exact  cause  or  the  specific  preventive  measures 
to  be  adopted.  Many  investigators  have  come  to 
think  that  the  two  troubles  have  a  common  cause 
and  that  a  calf  may  be  carried  to  full  term  and  be 

99 


100  THE  COW 

born  in  apparently  good  condition  and  yet  perish 
rather  promptly  because  of  germs  from  a  diseased 
mother.  Certain  it  is  that  from  time  to  time  in 
our  best  cared-for  herds,  scours  has  proved  a  veri- 
table scourge  that  .neither  painstaking  attention 
nor  the  best  veterinary  skill  has  been  able  to  arrest. 
The  specific  'disease  is  not  to  be  confounded  with 
the  chronic  indigestion  and  diarrhea  resulting 
from  improper  feeding  and  which  will  ordinarily 
be  cured  by  removing  the  cause. 

Contagious  abortion  is  without  doubt  the  most 
serious  disease  of  dairy  cattle  in  America.  Not 
only  is  there  loss  of  production  and  frequent  un- 
thrift  and  barrenness  as  a  sequel,  but  in  addition 
we  have  the  loss  of  the  offspring,  which  in  the 
pure-bred  herd  is  the  most  serious  aspect.  Noth- 
ing is  more  disheartening  than  to  see  calf  after 
calf  bom  prematurely  until  perhaps  hardly  one  re- 
mains. There  is  little  doubt  that  it  is  an  infectious 
germ  disease,  but  as  for  its  control  there  is  a  feel- 
ing of  discouragement  on  the  part  of  those  who 
have  had  the  most  experience.  One  fortunate  fact 
stands  out,  that,  like  many  germ  infections,  it  is 
self-limiting  and  one  attack  confers  at  least  partial 
immunity  against  further  ones.  Probably  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  few  herds  escape  contagious  abortion, 
especially  if  there  is  some  buying  and  selling  of 
cattle.  When  a  herd  has  heretofore  been  free,  the 
initial  attack  is  likely  to  be  especially  virulent. 
Usually  an   aborting   cow   will   retain   the   fetal 


THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  HEED  101 

membranes,  and  some  of  the  best  students  of  the 
question  insist  that  this  condition  can  occur  only 
as  the  result  of  a  specific  germ.  The  owner  will 
find  abundant  discussion  and  advice  available,  and 
he  may  at  least  rest  assured  that  if  he  will  keep  up 
his  courage,  care  well  for  his  animals  and  feed 
abundantly,  he  will  gradually  gather  a  herd  that  is 
at  least  partially  immune  so  that  a  premature  calf 
will  be  the  exception  instead  of  the  rule.  The 
writer  has  had  considerable  experience  as  a  lay- 
man in  the  effort  to  control  this  disease,  and  he 
has  no  desire  to  offer  specific  advice  or  to  combat 
any  system  of  treatment. 

Milk  fever  or  parturient  apoplexy,  while  a 
once  dreaded  scourge,  may  now  be  fairly  described 
as  of  mainly  historical  interest.  The  simple  and 
remarkably  efficient  method  for  its  cure  is  the  one 
great  outstanding  triumph  of  veterinary  medicine. 
Until  less  than  a  generation  ago,  the  cow  just 
easily  delivered  of  a  calf,  more  especially  if  she 
was  a  heavy  milker  and  in  the  best  condition, 
would  be  noticed  to  stagger,  within  a  few  moments 
go  down,  throw  her  head  around  against  her  side, 
breathe  slowly  and  noisily,  become  unconscious 
and  in  the  greater  number  of  cases  die  within 
twelve  to  thirty-six  hours.  Every  dairyman  who 
had  good  well-fed  cows  came  to  know  these  symp- 
toms only  too  well.  Of  course  we  called  the  cow 
doctor  and,  according  to  the  rules,  he  poured  down 
the  unconscious  animal  purgatives  and  aconite,  but 


102  THE  COW 

we  usually  buried  her  next  day.  It  is  true  that 
much  could  be  done  by  preventative  measures.  It 
was  known  that  milk  fever  usually  attacked  cows 
that  were  well  fed  and  fleshy,  the  precise  condition 
in  which  intelligent  dairymen  try  to  have  their  cat- 
tle at  freshing.  We  were  advised  to  give  her  only  a 
restricted  diet  for  two  weeks  before  calving,  but 
to  maintain  a  cow  in  this  manner  is  totally  opposed 
to  all  sound  tenets  of  good  dairy  management. 
Due  to  the  great  discovery  of  veterinarians  we  may 
now  feed  her  well,  and  when  the  first  premonitory 
symptoms  are  noticed  the  udder  is  pumped  full  of 
sterilized  and  filtered  air  until  it  is  tense  and  drum- 
like and  almost  invariably  within  a  few  hours  she 
will  be  apparently  as  well  as  ever. 

Bovine  tuberculosis  is  by  far  the  most  talked- 
about  of  all  cattle  diseases,  owing  to  the  fact  that 
many  well-informed  sanitarians  believe  that  it  may 
be  transmitted  to  the  human  race  as  well.  The  oc- 
currence of  tuberculosis  in  cattle  has  been  recog- 
nized for  many  years,  but  so  long  as  we  were  de- 
pendent on  physical  examination  for  its  detection, 
no  real  progress  toward  eradication  or  control 
was  possible.  The  discovery  of  tuberculin  and  its 
application  in  various  forms  to  the  tuberculin  test 
has  given  a  simple,  inexpensive  and  on  the  whole 
remarkably  accurate  diagnostic  agent  which  per- 
mits the  detection,  not  only  of  advanced  but  of  in- 
cipient cases  as  well.  If  bovine  tuberculosis  were 
confined  entirely  to  the  lower  animals,  it  would  not 


THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  HERD  103 

attract  any  very  special  attention,  and  it  surely 
would  not  be  possible  to  enlist  both  state  and  fed- 
eral aid  in  a  far-reaching  campaign  for  its  eradica- 
tion, in  which  not  only  is  there  supervision  of 
means  of  stamping  it  out,  but  also  provisions 
whereby  to  a  great  extent  the  public  assumes  the 
financial  burden  involved  in  the  destruction  of  the 
infected  animals.  Whether  or  not  bovine  tubercu- 
losis is  transmissible  to  man  is  one  of  the  perennial 
battlegrounds  of  the  biologists,  but  the  idea  is  at 
least  very  widely  credited  and  explains  in  large 
part  the  peculiar  interest  which  city  boards  of 
health  have  displayed  concerning  this  disease. 

Once  well  established  in  a  herd,  tuberculosis  is 
very  serious  from  the  economic  side,  apart  from 
any  questions  of  public  hygiene.  If  the  infection 
becomes  general,  there  will  be  the  unsatisfactory 
evidence  of  unthrifty  calves  and  young  stock  and 
from  time  to  time  an  occasional  cow  will  go  down 
with  generalized  "T.B.^'  In  any  case,  the  public 
and  the  more  progressive  breeders  are  so  aroused 
over  the  question  that  we  are  rapidly  approaching 
the  time  when  all  purchases  of  cattle  will  be  condi- 
tioned on  passing  a  tuberculin  test.  Solely  from 
the  standpoint  of  satisfaction  and  dairy  produc- 
tion, no  man  can  afford  to  keep  an  infected  herd 
and  if  we  grant  its  transmission  to  man  the  case 
for  its  eradication  becomes  infinitely  stronger. 

Another  trouble  that  is  always  with  us  and  the 
loss  from  which  runs  into  incalculable  sums,  sur- 


104  THE  COW 

passing  perhaps  even  epidemic  abortion,  is  garget 
and  udder  injuries  of  one  kind  or  another.  There 
may  be  mechanical  injury  to  the  udder  cr  inflamma- 
tion as  the  result  of  excessive  or  improper  feeding 
or  a  specific  infection  may  be  passed  from  one  cow 
to  another.  The  latter  type  is  commonly  very 
much  more  severe  and  often  treatment  seems  of 
little  avail.  As  a  result,  every  herd  of  much  size 
will  have  spoiled  udders,  sometimes  only  one,  some- 
times two  or  more  quarters  missing.  A  bad  case 
of  infective  garget  may  lead  to  the  actual  loss  of  a 
large  part  of  the  udder  by  sloughing  off.  In  this 
case,  there  will  be  severe  constitutional  disturb- 
ances with  high  fever  and  great  loss  of  flesh.  A 
good  cow  with  only  one  teat  gone  will  probably 
be  worth  keeping,  but  when  half  of  the  udder  is  lost 
it  will  be  better  to  salvage  her  at  the  butcher's 
unless  she  is  especially  valuable  on  account  of  her 
offspring.  Losses  from  garget  are  likely  to  be 
greatest  in  the  best  herds,  as  the  cow  with  an 
intensely  developed  milking  tendency  seems  to  be 
most  liable  and  also  because  the  high  feeding  with 
concentrated  protein  grains  practiced  in  the  best 
stables  acts  as  a  predisposing  cause.  It  may  be 
added  that  care,  patience  and  prompt  use  of  some 
simple  treatments  will  go  far  to  minimize  the 
losses. 

The  American  dairyman  is  very  fortunate  in 
not  having  to  reckon  with  some  very  serious  cattle 
plagues  which  are  found  in  Europe  and  other  parts 


THE  HEALTH  OF  THE  HEED  105 

of  the  world.  Among  these  are  pleuropneumonia, 
foot-and-mouth  disease  and  rinderpest.  The  two 
former  have  at  times  attained  a  foothold  on  our 
shores  but  by  a  vigorous  system  of  quarantine  and 
the  destruction  of  all  infected  and  exposed  animals 
they  have  been  absolutely  stamped  out,  the  result- 
ing saving  to  American  live-stock  interests  being 
beyond  all  calculation.  Some  of  these  temporary 
invasions  have  cost  large  sums,  have  involved  the 
enforced  slaughter  of  some  very  valuable  herds  of 
pure-bred  cows,  have  entailed  private  financial 
hardship  -and  have  aroused  most  bitter  animosity 
against  the  authority  charged  with  the  enforce- 
ment of  the  control  measure;  and  yet  the  some- 
what violent  means  adopted  have  been  justified  a 
thousandfold.  Several  times  within  a  generation 
foot-and-mouth  disease  has  thus  been  extinguished. 
It  is  a  testimony  to  what  can  be  accomplished  by 
trained  animal  sanitarians  armed  with  power,  but 
it  is  perhaps  too  much  to  hope  that  like  results 
can  be  attained  with  maladies  like  abortion  and 
tuberculosis  where  the  symptoms  are  slow  in  de- 
velopment and  m.ay  lie  long  concealed. 

No  man  will  go  very  far  in  the  business  of  dairy- 
ing without  suffering  losses  from  disease.  He  may 
not  have  many  mature  animals  die,  but  calf  scours, 
abortion  and  garget  will  always  be  present  and 
sometimes  will  take  their  toll.  Nor  need  he  feel, 
therefore,  that  he  has  been  ignorant  or  careless  in 
his    management.      Undoubtedly    more    intensive 


106  THE  COW 

feeding,  closer  housing  and  a  congested  cow  popu- 
lation has  tended  toward  the  increase  of  bovine 
disease.  As  an  offset  to  this  is  the  far  more  intel- 
ligent and  rational  treatment  than  in  the  old  days. 
Some  loss  is  a  part  of  the  dairy  business,  but  skill 
in  feeding  and  care  and  the  eradication  of  the 
feeble  and  diseased  animals  will  be  the  best  meas- 
ures to  minimize  these  losses. 


XI 

THE  DEPRECIATION  AND  THE  RENEWAL 
OF  THE  DAIRY  HERD 

Dairying  would  be  a  much  less  complex  and 
exacting  business  if  it  were  not  for  the  constant 
necessity  of  replacing  the  cows  which  for  one 
reason  or  another  drop  out  of  the  herd.  This  shift 
and  change  in  the  make-up  of  the  working  herd  is 
much  greater  than  one  would  expect  until  one 
considers  the  various  factors  involved. 

The  cow  is  fairly  long-lived,  although  not  equal- 
ing the  horse  in  this  respect.  Many  cows  are  still 
useful  at  thirteen  to  fifteen  years  of  age.  The 
records  of  registry  associations  show  that  an  oc- 
casional individual  is  still  bearing  young  and 
milking  up  to  twenty  or  more  years.  The  bovine 
wonder  of  the  world  so  far  as  age  is  concerned  was 
the  cow  Old  Grannie  recorded  as  No.  1  in  the 
Aberdeen-Angus  herd-book.  She  is  credited  with 
dropping  twenty-five  calves,  the  last  one  in  her 
twenty-ninth  year  and  finally  dying  at  the  (for 
cows)  ripe  old  age  of  thirty-six.  Probably  if  it 
were  desirable  to  retain  cows  to  extreme  age,  many 
would  reach  a  quarter  of  a  century.    Nevertheless, 

107 


108  THE  COW 

rather  careful  studies  in  New  York  and  Minnesota 
covering  some  thousands  of  cows  indicate  that  the 
average  individual  reaches  an  age  of  only  between 
eight  and  nine  years.  This  figure  does  not  mean 
that  cows  die  at  this  average  age  but  rather  it 
represents  the  age  at  which  they  are  removed  from 
the  herd.  Low-grade  beef  rather  than  natural 
death  is  the  fate  of  most  cows.  Inasmuch  as  a 
cow  must  be  at  least  two  years  old  before  she 
"comes  in,"  her  actual  period  of  usefulness  does 
not  average  more  than  seven  years.  It  also  means 
that  for  each  seven  cows  in  the  herd  it  will  be 
necessary  each  year  to  raise  at  least  one  calf  to 
take  their  place.  There  is  really  a  rather  rapid 
shift  of  our  bovine  population. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  these  estimates 
are  the  average  for  a  large  number  of  dairies,  but 
it  does  not  follow  that  the  same  will  be  true  on 
any  particular  farm.  The  number  of  cows  re- 
moved from  the  herd  will  vary  widely  with  cir- 
cumstances and  with  the  policy  pursued,  but  in 
general  the  more  active  and  enterprising  owners 
will  have  the  largest  "turn-over"  of  cows  because 
they  will  be  more  energetic  and  persistent  in 
culling  out  undesirable  individuals  and  will  not 
wait  until  a  cow  reaches  extreme  age  before  dis- 
posing of  her. 

There  are  a  number  of  reasons  why  some  14  per 
cent  of  our  dairy  cows  must  be  replaced  each  year. 
Disease  and  accident  always  take  their  toll,  but 


DEPRECIATION  OF  THE  DAIRY  HERD     109 

this  is  not  the  most  important  factor.  It  has  been 
shown  by  investigations  covering  several  thousand 
cows  that  the  actual  annual  loss  by  death  was  only 
1.2  per  cent,  and  these  figures  were  the  same  in 
New  York  and  Minnesota. 

Mechanical  injury  to  the  teats  and  udder,  such 
as  having  a  teat  crushed  in  the  stable  by  the  foot 
of  another  cow  or  tearing  the  udder  on  a  barbed 
wire  fence,  occasionally  leads  to  the  loss  of  a  teat. 
Infective  garget  is  a  much  more  serious  trouble, 
nearly  always  leading  to  the  entire  loss  of  the 
quarters  affected.  In  either  case,  the  dairy  use- 
fulness of  the  animal  is  diminished  and  results  in 
its  disposal  for  beef. 

Failure  to  breed  or  barrenness  is  very  common 
and  of  course  renders  the  cow  valueless  except  for 
slaughter. 

Probably  the  largest  single  cause  is  poor  pro- 
duction, the  animal  being  turned  to  the  butcher 
because  she  fails  to  give  milk  enough  to  justify  her 
existence.  It  may  be  added  that  even  more  cows 
ought  to  be  eliminated  for  this  same  reason.  We 
cannot  well  over-emphasize  the  slogan  that  the 
path  of  the  unproductive  cow  ought  to  lead 
straight  to  the  butcher's  block. 

Finally,  there  is  the  question  of  wearing  out 
through  old  age.  A  cow  really  fails  largely  because 
her  teeth  become  poor  and  she  is  handicapped  in 
gathering  her  food  at  pasture  and  to  a  less  degree 
in  the  stable.     The  teeth  of  a  horse  continue  to 


110  THE  COW 

grow  throughout  life  and  the  older  they  are,  the 
longer  and  more  protruding  they  become.  Cows 
have  front  teeth  on  the  lower  jaw  only  and  these 
frequently  drop  out  and  in  other  cases  are  worn 
off  to  the  very  roots.  It  is  perhaps  not  far  wrong 
to -say  that  a  cow  is  no  older  than  her  teeth.  In 
purchasing  a  cow  of  somewhat  doubtful  age,  an 
examination  of  the  mouth  is  the  first  necessity. 

The  depletion  of  the  herd  by  death  and  accidents 
and  the  necessary  eliminations  for  other  reasons 
constitutes  an  "overhead"  charge  which  is  some- 
times forgotten  but  which  is  really  a  most  serious 
economic  factor.  The  ultimate  end  of  the  cows 
that  prove  to  be  failures  as  producers  or  that  meet 
with  some  accident  or  disability  is  slaughter. 
Dairy-cow  beef  is  so  low  in  price  that  the  value  of 
a  worn-out  or  disabled  animal  is  commonly  only 
from  one-third  to  one-half  of  her  price  if  sound. 
Considering  all  this,  it  seems  certain  that  in  cal- 
culating the  balance  sheet  of  a  dairy  business,  it 
will  be  necessary  under  the  best  management  to 
"charge  off''  each  year  at  least  10  per  cent  exclusive 
of  the  salvage  value  of  the  animals  disposed  of,  a 
depreciation  charge  much  higher  than  obtains  in 
some  other  types  of  agriculture.  If  this  estimate 
is  wide  of  the  mark,  it  is  at  fault  in  being  too  low 
rather  than  too  high. 

Broadly  speaking,  there  are  two  methods  of 
maintaining  the  numbers  of  the  herd.  One  is 
merely  to  purchase  animals  to  replace  the  fallen 


O  a> 


^   ^ 

3 

M 


DEPRECIATION  OF  THE  DAIRY  HERD     111 

from  time  to  time  as  the  necessity  arises.  The 
dairyman  who  is  selling  liquid  milk  and  who, 
therefore,  has  no  skim-milk  available  will  often, 
perhaps  usually,  find  this  the  wisest  plan.  This  is 
especially  true  if  he  is  located  on  high-priced  land 
and  has  no  rough  outlying  areas  where  heifers  and 
dry  stock  may  be  cheaply  pastured.  It  is  emphati- 
cally true,  however,  that  the  purchase  plan  is  by 
no  means  ideal.  The  buyer  will  always  be  asked  to 
accept  animals  which  are  really  the  rejects  and 
discards  of  other  men.  Also,  he  can  never  escape 
the  danger  of  buying  tuberculosis  and  epidemic 
abortion  together  with  its  sequel,  barrenness.  He 
stands  more  than  a  fair  chance  of  acquiring  hard 
milkers  and  kickers  and  fence  jumpers.  He  will 
abundantly  exemplify  the  ancient  maxim  of  the 
law,  "Let  the  buyer  beware."  As  an  offset  to  these 
disadvantages  is  the  fact  that  to  rear  a  calf  on 
whole  milk  and  purchased  foods  and  pasture  it  on 
high-priced  lands  will  almost  always  cost  more 
than  to  purchase  a  fresh  cow  in  the  markets.  The 
only  reason  why  the  dairyman  so  situated  should 
raise  a  calf  is  the  expectation  that  it  will  make  a 
better  cow  than  he  can  buy. 

In  the  vicinity  of  cities  are  numerous  examples 
of  what  might  be  called  "high  pressure'^  dairying, 
the  cows  being  bought  when  new-milch,  heavily 
fed  and  milked  and  then  as  soon  as  they  begin  to 
take  on  flesh  and  diminish  in  milk  yield,  they  are 
sold  for  beef  and  a  fresh  cow  installed  in  their 


112  THE  COW 

place.  This  plan  involves  a  certain  loss  as  between 
the  cost  and  selling  price  of  every  cow  handled  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  does  away  with  the  charge 
involved  in  feeding  and  caring  for  calves  and  heifer 
and  dry  cows. 

But  after  all,  for  most  of  us,  the  true  pleasure 
and  satisfaction  of  dairying  comes  through  the 
plan  of  maintaining  the  herd  by  calves  born  and 
reared  on  the  farm.  The  dairyman  who,  like  the 
writer,  sells  cream  or  who  makes  butter  or  ice- 
cream and  hence  has  available  an  abundance  of 
skim-milk,  should  by  all  means  expect  to  raise  all 
the  promising  heifer  calves.  This  will  of  course 
give  him  more  cows  than  he  requires  to  replenish 
his  herd,  but  there  are  two  marked  and  distinct 
advantages.  There  is  always  an  eager  market  at 
increasing  prices  for  well-bred  and  well  reared 
grade  young  stock  and  these,  while  in  a  way  a  sort 
of  by-product  of  the  business,  may  constitute  a  very 
important  addition  to  the  farm  revenue.  There  is 
also  the  further  advantage  that,  having  a  large 
number  of  young  cows  to  select  from,  he  may  cull 
his  herd  more  closely,  retaining  only  the  most  de- 
sirable individuals  and  thus  raising  the  general 
average  of  production.  It  ought  to  be  written  in 
capital  letters  that  the  most  important  single  fac- 
tor in  profitable  dairying  is  not  breed,  feed,  meth- 
ods or  stable  care,  but  efficient  cows.  This,  to  bor- 
row a  phrase  from  Thomas  Carlyle,  is  the  "one 
thing  altogether  indispensable."     Even  the  most 


DEPKECIATION  OF  THE  DAIRY  HERD     113 

careful  breeding  does  not  secure  continuous  prog- 
ress and  one  of  the  most  disheartening  facts  is  that 
not  infrequently  the  offspring  is  inferior  to  the 
dam.  The  man  who  has  heifers  of  his  own  breeding 
in  considerable  numbers  stands  the  best  chance  of 
maintaining  a  high  average  excellency. 

It  has  been  noted  in  an  earlier  chapter  that  suc- 
cess or  failure  in  dairying  does  not  depend  on  the 
selection  of  any  particular  breed.  Both  experience 
and  theory  indicate  that  real  constructive  dairy 
improvement  must  come  through  the  use  of  pure- 
bred sires  and  that,  having  chosen  one  breed,  a 
stockman  must  stick  to  it  consecutively  through 
the  years.  He  will  soon  have  a  herd  of  grades,  the 
first  cross  being  commonly  stated  as  one-half 
pure-bred,  the  next  one  as  three-fourths  pure-bred, 
and  so  on.  Four  or  five  successive  crosses  with 
males  of  the  same  breed  rapidly  reduce  the  pro- 
portion of  native  blood  to  an  insignificant  fraction 
and  will  result  in  a  herd  which  in  color,  size,  gen- 
eral appearance  and  real  daiiy  usefulness  will  be 
the  equivalent  of  a  registered  herd,  the  main  dif- 
ference being  that  they  can  never  have  their  names 
written  in  any  herd-book  nor  can  they  be  sold  at 
prices  approaching  that  of  registered  stock. 

It  may  be  asked  whether  there  is  any  funda- 
mental reason  other  than  sentiment  for  the  use 
of  the  pure-bred  sire  rather  than  the  mongrel,  that 
is,  the  animal  of  mixed  or  promiscuous  breeding. 
The  whole  value  of  a  sire  depends  on  his  ability 


114  THE  COW 

to  transmit  his  characters  to  his  offspring.  To 
this  power  the  biologist  gives  the  name  "pre- 
potency." This  power  or  ability  raries  greatly  in 
different  individuals  and  the  histoiy  of  breeding 
is  really  a  chronicle  of  the  influence  of  certain 
famous  sires  who  have  been  prepotent  to  an  un- 
usual degree.  It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  classi- 
cal examples  of  this  fact.  There  is  the  Jersey  bull, 
Stoke  Pogis  3d,  sacrificed  for  beef  while  still  young 
before  his  value  was  realized,  yet  it  is  said  that 
every  daughter  of  his  that  ever  was  tested  made  a 
record  that  would  have  entitled  her  to  admission 
to  the  Jersey  Register  of  Merit.  There  is  the 
stallion  Hambletonian  10  who,  during  a  period  of 
twenty-one  years,  was  the  progenitor  of  1287  foals, 
a  large  percentage  of  which  were  notably  fast. 
This  was  true  not  only  of  Hambletonian  himself 
but  of  his  sons  as  well,  so  that  by  common  consent 
he  stands  unapproached  as  the  foremost  horse  in 
the  history  of  the  American  trotter. 

It  is  this  mysterious  quality  of  prepotency  that 
above  everything  else  is  to  be  desired  in  the  sire. 
Unfortunately  not  every  pure-bred  animal  pos- 
sesses it,  but  there  is  abundant  evidence  to  show 
that  the  animal  which  for  a  long  period  has  been 
bred  within  certain  blood  lines  without  admixture 
of  diverse  strains  is  more  likely  to  be  prepotent. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  cross-bred  or  native  or 
mongrel  may  be  and  frequently  is  of  excellent  in- 
dividuality, but  they  are  surely  much  less  likely 


DEPRECIATION  OF  THE  DAIRY  HERD    115 

to  be  able  to  transmit  these  good  qualities  to  tbeir 
offspring. 

Not  every  dairyman  need  expect  to  become  a 
breeder  of  registered  cattle.  Indeed,  after  many 
years  of  agitation  and  propaganda,  less  than  2  per 
cent  of  the  dairy  cows  of  the  eastern  United  States 
are  pure-bred.  However,  every  dairyman  who  ex- 
pects to  rear  calves  to  replenish  his  herd  ought 
either  to  own  or  else  pay  the  service  fee  of  a  good 
pure-bred  sire.  While  a  certain  rather  small  per- 
centage of  bull  calves  of  fashionable  breeding  and 
born  of  dams  who  have  been  admitted  to  "Advanced 
Registry,''  that  is,  dams  whose  high  production  has 
been  officially  demonstrated  and  certified,  sell  at 
high  prices,  plenty  of  calves  of  excellent  breeding, 
especially  when  owned  by  the  less  widely  known 
breeders,  can  be  purchased  at  prices  quite  within 
the  reach  of  any  dairyman. 


XII 

THE  JUDGING  OF  COWS 

A  VERY  eminent  teacher  of  animal  industry  has 
said  that  he  could  learn  more  about  a  cow  by 
weighing  her  milk  for  a  week  and  testing  it  with 
the  Babcock  test  than  he  could  by  a  life-long  ex- 
amination of  her  according  to  any  scale  of  points — 
a  conclusion  in  which  any  good  daiiyman  will 
heartily  concur.  But  on  the  other  hand,  we  may 
not  always  be  able  to  weigh  and  test  her  milk  and, 
moreover,  there  are  certain  accepted  standards  of 
beauty  and  form  in  cattle,  certain  requirements  as 
to  individuality  insisted  on  in  the  show-ring  and 
the  sales  pavilion.  No  matter  how  much  attention 
is  paid  to  official  testing,  we  shall  never  cease  to 
exhibit  cattle  for  prizes  at  the  fairs  and  always 
our  agricultural  college  boys  will  continue  to  or- 
ganize judging  teams  to  compete  in  the  art  of 
placing  animals  according  to  certain  agreed  stand- 
ards of  form,  color,  carriage,  qualities  of  udder 
and  skin  and  hoof  and  horn.  This  judging  and 
scoring  of  animals  is  a  fine  art  and  one  that  de- 
serves to  be  encouraged  by  lovers  of  good  live-stock 
and  by  our  teachers  of  animal  husbandry.     It  is 

116 


THE  JUDGING  OF  COWS  117 

true  that  the  price  at  which  dairy  cows  sell  depends 
largely  on  their  Advanced  Registry  certificate,  i.e., 
the  officially  certified  records  as  to  their  ability  to 
produce  pounds  of  milk  and  butter-fat.  It  is  also 
true,  however,  that  really  high  prices  will  never 
be  paid  for  cows  that  carry  misshapen  udders  and 
sloping  rumps  and  winged  shoulders.  In  other 
words,  men  who  love  cattle  demand  not  only  ability 
to  give  high  production  but  good  individuality  as 
well. 

There  are  two  different  ideals  in  judging  cattle. 
Unfortunately,  almost  every  breed  at  some  period 
of  its  development  has  suffered  because  the  men 
setting  breed  fashions  have  followed  some  per- 
sonal fancy  or  fad  or  character  which  had  no  par- 
ticular connection  with  usefulness,  dairy  efficiency 
or  beauty.  For  example,  not  so  long  ago  Jersey 
breeders  laid  great  stress  on  the  importance  of 
solid  color  together  with  a  black  switch  and  tongue 
characters  that  can  have  no  possible  relation  to 
dairy  temperament  or  capacity.  Judging  cattle 
according  to  merely  fanciful  standards  or  points 
that  have  no  bearing  on  the  question  of  production 
is  very  superficial.  Fortunately,  on  the  whole, 
there  is  less  of  this  judging  than  there  was  at  an 
earlier  period  of  the  pure-bred  business. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  representing  the  seasoned 
experience  and  observation  of  many  handlers  and 
students  of  dairy  cows,  there  has  come  a  substan- 
tial agreement  concerning  certain  external  charae- 


118  THE  COW 

ters  to  be  determined  not  only  by  the  eye  but  quite 
as  much  by  the  touch,  which  are  the  usual  (but 
by  no  means  invariable)  indications  of  dairy  tem- 
perament and  capacity. 

Every  breed  association  has  adopted  its  own 
official  score-card  or  scale  of  points.  These  will 
vary  one  from  the  other  in  minor  questions  of 
coloration,  shape  of  horns,  quality  of  coat  and 
other  non-essentials,  but  in  fundamentals  they  are 
Yerj  much  alike,  showing  that  the  scoring  of  cattle 
is  more  than  a  mere  empirical  art.  The  score-card 
is  very  useful  to  the  student  or  judge  because  it 
brings  the  various  qualities  of  the  animal  to  his 
attention  in  an  orderly  and  systematic  sequence. 
The  reader  will  find  it  very  interesting  to  study 
the  official  scale  of  points  of  any  of  the  dairy  cattle 
registry  associations  or  the  card  prepared  for  the 
use  of  students  by  our  animal  husbandry  teachers 
in  the  agricultural  colleges,  but  these  occupy  too 
much  space  to  be  reproduced  here.  It  will  be 
noted  that  there  has  grown  up  a  fairly  large  half- 
technical  half -slangy  vocabulary  of  the  judging 
ring. 

In  judging  dairy  cattle,  one  point  universally 
emphasized  is  that  the  cow  (and  to  a  less  extent 
the  bull  or  calf)  should  show  the  wedge  shape  or, 
as  it  is  sometimes  put,  the  '^double  wedge  form." 
This  means  that  the  hind  quarters,  or  more  strictly 
the  pelvic  arch,  should  be  relatively  broader  and 
more  massive  than  the  chest.    This  conception  may 


THE  JUDGING  OF  COWS  119 

be  visualized  thus:  If  imaginary  lines  are  drawn 
from  the  extreme  outside  points  of  the  hip-bones  to 
the  outside  points  of  the  shoulders  and  then  con- 
tinued forward,  they  should  meet  at  a  point  some 
little  distance  in  front.  The  same  is  true  of  lines 
along  the  spine  and  belly,  although  it  will  be  under- 
stood that  this  can  hardly  be  demonstrated  with 
the  exactness  of  a  problem  in  Euclid.  Let  it  be 
said,  however,  in  the  most  emphatic  manner  that 
a  good  cow  is  wedge-shaped  not  because  she  is 
narrow  in  front  but  because  she  is  broad  behind. 
The  distinction  is  most  fundamental.  If  the  wedge 
shape  is  secured  only  at  the  expense  of  a  restricted 
heart  and  lung  cavity,  it  is  all  wrong.  A  roomy, 
wide-spread  pelvis  is  necessary  to  shelter  the  or- 
gans of  reproduction  and  to  give  easy  room  for 
the  attachment  of  a  capacious  udder.  This  udder 
cannot  be  easily  swung  if  the  cow  has  thighs  like 
a  beef  steer,  hence  we  look  for  "cat  hams''  and  an 
animal  "high  in  the  twist.'^ 

Most  score-cards  ask  for  a  cow  with  a  back  "level 
from  the  point  of  the  withers  to  the  setting  on 
of  the  tail-head,"  or  similar  phrasing.  This  means 
that  a  sloping  rump  is  not  desirable.  This  is  per- 
haps a  rather  "fancy"  point  but  a  sloping  rump  is 
very  often  correlated  with  an  udder  hung  too  far 
forward  and  with  poor  rear  udder  development. 

A  cow  "down  in  the  back"  or  "sway-backed"  is 
undesirable  from  the  viewpoint  of  beauty  or  sym- 
metry and  it  is  always  preferable  to  have  the  back 


120  THE  COW 

level ;  yet  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  particular 
fault  seems  to  be  very  common  in  cows  of  marked 
excellence.  There  may  be  a  special  reason  for  this 
because  a  great  abdomen  and  a  heavy  udder,  both 
so  necessary  for  a  good  cow,  tend  to  put  a  down- 
ward curve  in  the  spine,  especially  with  advancing 
years.  In  this  case  the  popular  ^'good  top  line" 
and  real  daii-y  performance  may  be  to  some  ex- 
tent antagonistic. 

The  ribs  should  be  well  sprung,  giving  a  barrel- 
shaped  chest  and  enormous  abdomen,  because  if  a 
cow  is  really  to  be  a  high  producer  she  must  first 
of  all  have  a  great  stomach  that  can  hold  and  digest 
large  amounts  of  bulky  food.  This  reminds  one 
of  Napoleon's  famous  dictum  regarding  the  com- 
mon soldier,  "Away  with  brains.    Give  me  guts." 

The  withers  should  be  rather  thin  and  sharp,  the 
very  opposite  of  the  beef  type.  Heavy  withers  are 
usually  correlated  w^ith  a  thick  hard  hide,  a  heavy 
tail  and  a  generally  beefy  conformation.  The 
vertebrae  should  be  large  and  prominent  to  the 
touch,  showing  mainly  that  they  are  not  padded 
and  covered  with  fatty  tissue.  Stripped  of  their 
flesh,  the  skeletons  of  the  milch  cow  and  the  typical 
beef  cow  can  hardly  be  distinguished  by  the  best 
trained  anatomist,  but  the  dairy  cow  is  more  in- 
clined to  be  "raw-boned"  because  she  puts  her  fat 
in  the  pail  instead  of  using  it  to  upholster  her 
framework. 

We  must  shun  the  hard,  thick,  inelastic  hide,  for 


THE  JUDGING  OF  COWS  121 

there  is  no  worse  indication.  The  skin  need  not 
be  especially  thin  but  it  must  be  "mellow"  to  the 
touch,  elastic  and  loose,  so  that  behind  the  shoul- 
ders one  may  pick  up  a  handful  of  it.  This  quality 
of  being  a  "good  handler"  has  always  been  a  much 
esteemed  character  and  the  word  was  used  by 
writers  more  than  a  century  ago.  Some  judges 
place  much  emphasis  on  the  color  and  abundance 
of  the  "secretions,"  meaning  thereby  the  oily  mat- 
ter in  the  skin,  the  waxy  material  within  the  ear 
and  the  yellow  dandruff  at  the  roots  of  the  long 
hairs  in  the  tail.  Most  cows  who  give  even  small 
amounts  of  very  rich  milk  are  likely  to  exhibit 
these  indications  in  a  marked  degree.  Desirable 
characters  are  a  bright,  active,  prominent  eye,  a 
lively  ear,  a  great  broad  muzzle  and  powerful  jaw, 
a  horn  not  too  heavy,  and  always  an  air  of  supple 
slenderness  which  we  call  feminine  as  opposed  to 
the  rugged  masculinity  of  the  bull. 

There  remains  the  udder,  to  which  more  points 
are  given  and  on  which  more  stress  is  laid  than  on 
any  other  one  feature.  It  must  be  acknowledged 
that  some  cows  which  are  excellent  dairy  animals 
from  the  standpoint  of  production  nevertheless 
carry  miserably  misshapen  udders,  but  this  is  their 
misfortune.  A  beautiful  symmetrical  udder  is  a 
point  worth  striving  after.  It  should  be  "square,'^ 
with  the  four  teats  wide  apart  but  not  "strutting."' 
It  should  be  attached  far  up  between  the  thighs 
behind  and  yet  be  carried  far  forward  under  the 


122  THE  COW 

belly  also.  It  should  be  ^^buttoned  up  close"  to 
the  abdomen  and  not  swinging  or  pendulous,  else 
it  will  chafe  and  be  more  liable  to  mechanical 
injury.  It  should  be  soft  and  Yery  elastic,  covered 
w^ith  silky  hair  and  should  fall  into  loose  folds  of 
skin  when  empty. 

The  milk  veins  have  perhaps  received  undue 
attention,  many  holding  that  these  are  the  one 
unmistakable  sign  of  a  good  cow.  We  like  to  see 
them  long  and  crooked  and  if  possible  divided  into 
two  or  three  branches,  entering  the  abdomen 
through  as  many  different  holes  or  "milk  wells.'^ 
It  is  at  least  a  reasonable  assumption  that  the  size 
of  these  veins  is  a  measure  of  the  circulatory  ac- 
tivity of  the  udder  and  if  so  they  should  be  a  sort 
of  measure  of  dairy  capacity.  They  may  be  traced 
out  on  a  very  much  smaller  scale  in  bulls  also  and 
in  this  case  are  given  considerable  value.  Some 
poor  cows  have  prominent  milk  veins,  but  most 
inferior  ones  do  not,  and  nearly  all  animals  of 
unusual  capacity  will  exhibit  marked  development 
in  this  regard. 

The  question  may  be  fairly  asked:  "How  much 
connection  is  there  between  conformation  and  per- 
formance and  to  what  extent  are  these  supposed 
indications  of  dairy  excellence  really  borne  out  by 
the  hard  test  of  the  milk  scales  and  the  Babcock 
bottle?"  The  writer  has  been  intimately  associ- 
ated with  the  care  of  a  herd  for  many  years.  He 
has  done  some  buying  and  selling  and  some  show- 


THE  JUDGING  OF  COWS  123 

ring  judging  and  has  tried  to  determine  how  far 
there  is  a  real  relation  between  a  cow's  conforma- 
tion and  her  ability  to  produce.  His  conclusions 
are  as  follows :  Some  cows,  too  many,  in  fact,  pos- 
sess every  external  character  that  is  supposed  to 
indicate  the  superior  dairy  animal  and  yet  seem 
unable  to  ^'deliver  the  goods."  They  are  calculated 
to  deceive  the  very  elect.  Something  they  lack,  be 
it  constitution  or  vigor  or  pep  or  whatever  term 
you  choose  to  employ.  On  the  other  hand,  he  has 
yet  to  see  the  cow  of  beefy  build,  hard,  thick  inelas- 
tic hide,  heavy  hams,  thick  withers,  bull-headed, 
with  a  tucked  up  little  udder  and  small,  inconspic- 
uous milk  veins  buried  in  tissue  that  by  any 
stretch  of  courtesy  can  be  called  a  superior  dairy 
animal.  Emphatically,  dairy  indications  are  more 
than  skin  deep.  We  hold  to  the  ecclesiastical  doc- 
trine that  "there  are  outward  signs  of  inward 
grace." 


XIII 
THE  DAIRY  FARMSTEAD 

In  the  business  of  dairying  three  principal  fac- 
tors and  items  of  investment  are  to  be  considered, 
— the  land,  the  barns  and  the  herd. 

So  far  as  the  land  is  concerned,  it  has  already 
been  noted  that  dairying  is  commonly  a  hill- 
country  business.  Of  course  this  does  not  mean 
that  cow-keeping  is  restricted  to  this  type  of 
country  or  that  the  very  best  land  may  not  be 
employed  profitably  in  dairying.  It  indicates  that 
much  land  too  rough  and  hilly  to  be  well  adapted 
to  the  production  of  staple  cash  crops  may  be  very 
well  utilized  in  dairying  and  hence  that  industry 
has  largely  gone  to  the  rougher  and  cheaper  areas. 
On  the  other  hand,  one  must  not  make  the  mistake 
of  concluding  that  the  cow  is  adapted  to  very  poor 
land.  She  can  make  good  use  of  steep  and  rocky 
pastures  if  they  are  reasonably  fertile  and  clothed 
with  grass,  but  light,  poor,  sandy  soils,  if  they  are 
worth  trying  to  utilize  at  all,  had  better  be  given 
over  to  sheep.  Experience  in  the  range  countiy  of 
the  West  with  a  very  scanty  rainfall  shows  that 
on  these  lands  the  beef  steer  rather  than  the  dairy 

124 


THE  DAIRY  FAEMSTEAD  125 

cow  gives  the  best  results.  Also  the  dairy  farm 
must  have  something  besides  rocky  pastures. 
There  must  be  stretches  of  meadow  and  areas 
adapted  to  corn  for,  as  a  rule,  the  man  who  at- 
tempts dairying  as  his  main  business  without  the 
aid  of  the  corn  plant  will  be  almost  hopelessly 
handicapped  from  the  beginning.  There  are  cer- 
tain exceptions  to  this  general  statement.  Some 
regions  are  either  so  far  north  or  else  lie  so  far 
above  sea-level  that  the  seasons  are  too  short  and 
cool  for  this  heat-loving  plant,  and  yet  our  native 
grasses  are  most  thoroughly  at  home.  In  these 
localities,  one  may  find  a  highly  developed  dairy 
industry  without  the  silo. 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  cow  can 
utilize  steep  and  rocky  hillsides  to  advantage  only 
in  conjunction  with  corresponding  areas  of  land 
that  are  fairly  free  of  stone  and  level  enough  to 
permit  the  use  of  modern  agricultural  machinery. 
Fortunately  this  is  just  the  condition  which  ob- 
tains on  many  of  the  farms  in  the  Hill-Country  of 
the  northeastern  states. 

It  is,  of  course,  utterly  impossible  to  lay  down 
any  scheme  of  crop  rotation  that  will  fit  all  sections 
of  the  country  or  that  will  apply  to  every  farm  in 
any  particular  locality.  Indeed,  every  farm  con- 
stitutes a  separate  problem  in  farm  management. 
It  is  equally  impossible  to  say  how  many  cows 
ought  to  be  maintained  on  a  farm  of  any  given  size 
because  this  will  vary  through  the  very  widest 


126  THE  COW 

limits.  It  may  be  practicable  under  skilled  and  in- 
tensive agriculture  on  the  best  lands  (especially  if 
far  enough  south  so  that  some  double-cropping 
may  be  practiced)  to  approximate  one  cow  for  each 
acre  of  arable  land,  although  this  will  imply  the 
purchase  of  a  large  part  of  the  grain  food.  In  most 
of  the  dairy  regions  of  the  northeastern  United 
States,  a  cow  for  each  three  to  five  acres  will  be  a 
much  more  reliable  and  conservative  estimate. 

It  is  perhaps  foolish  to  specify  any  farm,  real  or 
imaginary,  and  lay  down  a  hard  and  fast  system 
of  rotation  and  cropping.  All  schemes  of  this 
character  must  be  more  or  less  elastic.  However, 
as  a  sort  of  working  hypothesis,  we  may  imagine  a 
farm  somewhere  in  the  dairy  belt  containing  one 
hundred  acres  of  cleared  land.  We  will  assume 
that  fifty  acres  of  this  area  are  too  steep  and  rocky 
to  be  tillable  and  hence  must  be  used  as  permanent 
pasture.  The  remaining  fifty  acres  are  level  and 
smooth  enough  and  have  sufficient  fertility  to 
make  good  meadow  or  to  grow  cora.  How  many 
dairy  cows  such  a  farm  will  support  will  depend 
very  largely  on  the  character  and  agricultural 
condition  of  the  soil  and  on  the  skill  and  energy 
of  the  owner.  Nevertheless,  there  is  something 
like  an  average  farm  and  average  efficiency  in 
management  and,  bearing  this  in  mind,  we  may 
venture  to  make  some  estimates  as  to  the  produc- 
tivity of  this  farm. 

Suppose  we  see  whether  this  farm  is  fitted  to 


THE  DAIKY  FAEMSTEAD  127 

provide  at  least  the  roughage  for  twenty  milking 
cows  together  with  the  young  stock  and  necessary 
horses.  The  farm  stock  will  then  comprise  twenty 
cows,  a  bull,  five  yearling  heifers,  five  calves  and 
three  or  four  horses. 

The  fifty  acres  of  permanent  pasture,  if  it  is 
fairly  good,  ought  to  provide  the  larger  part  of 
the  grazing  required  during  the  pasture  periods, 
which  is  only  a  little  more  than  five  months. 
Later  in  the  season  we  may  supplement  the  old 
pastures  by  allowing  the  cows  to  graze  off  some 
of  the  aftermath  in  the  meadows.  The  temptation 
will  be  to  overdo  this  because,  while  rather  hard 
on  the  meadows,  it  is  excellent  for  the  cows. 

Corn  silage  is  one  of  the  very  best  and  cheapest 
of  cow  forages  and  should  fill  a  large  place  in  the 
yearly  menu.  A  cow  will  profitably  use  forty 
pounds  of  silage  a  day  and  this  amount  will  very 
satisfactorily  replace  ten  or  twelve  pounds  of  good 
hay.  This  means  four  tons  of  silage  to  a  cow  for 
the  200  days  that  she  must  depend  mainly  on  stable 
feeding.  Some  silage  should  supplement  the  sum- 
mer pastures  in  dry  weather  or  late  in  the  season, 
say  a  ton  to  a  cow  for  this  purpose,  which  will 
mean  that  one  can  feed  liberally,  if  necessary,  for 
six  weeks  or  two  months.  It  may  be  said  in  pass- 
ing that  a  supply  of  silage  for  summer  is  far  su- 
perior to  any  scheme  of  growing  green  crops  to 
help  out  scanty  pastures.  One  would  better  ar- 
range for  five  tons  of  silage  for  each  cow  and  some 


128  THE  COW 

for  the  heifers  and  even  for  the  calves.  A  round 
eilo  thirty  feet  high  and  sixteen  feet  in  diameter 
if  well  filled  will  hold  about  120  tons,  and  this 
will  be  about  what  is  required  in  our  scheme  of 
dairy  management. 

A  good  farmer  ought  to  produce  twelve  tons  of 
silage  to  the  acre  on  the  average,  so  at  least  ten 
acres  of  corn  should  be  planted.  This  corn  will 
always  be  grown  by  plowing  up  ten  acres  of  the 
oldest  and  poorest  meadow  and  it  will  always  be 
followed  by  oats.  Our  farm  rotation  map  appears 
about  as  follows : 

50  acres  permanent  pasture 

10  acres  corn 

10  acres  oats 

30  acres  hay 

The  amount  of  com  required  is  really  the  key 
to  the  whole  scheme.  If  a  larger  proportion  of  the 
farm  were  tillable,  we  would  have  less  pasture  and 
more  crops. 

The  ten  acres  of  oats  can  hardly  be  expected  to 
yield  more  than  500  bushels  and  this  will  be  far 
above  the  average  of  the  country,  but  fortunately 
dairy  farms  generally  yield  more  than  average 
crops.  After  we  have  fed  the  horses  and  poultry 
and  saved  oats  for  seed,  there  will  not  be  many  left 
for  the  cows.  In  other  words,  we  must  expect  to 
buy  most  of  the  grain  feed. 

The  thirty  acres  of  hay  (the  ten  acres  of  new 
seeding  being  mostly  clover)  ought  to  give  forty- 


THE  DAIEY  FAEMSTEAD  129 

^ye  tons  of  hay.  This  will  be  enough  for  the  horses 
and  cattle,  supplemented  as  it  is  by  silage. 

This  is  a  sort  of  empirical  made-on-paper  scheme 
but  it  is  at  least  the  outline  of  a  cropping  system 
which  is  fundamentally  sound  and  which  will  work 
out  well  in  the  dairy  belt  of  the  northeastern 
states.  At  the  same  time  it  may  be  greatly  modi- 
fied. If  the  farm  is  so  fortunate  as  to  lie  in  the 
limestone  country  where  alfalfa  is  at  home,  the 
area  of  meadow  may  be  reduced  and  two  crops  of 
oats  may  be  grown  in  succession  before  re-seeding. 
If  this  is  done  it  will  double  our  acreage  of  oats 
and  we  may  expect  to  have  enough  to  help  out  con- 
siderably in  making  up  the  grain  ration.  Some- 
times if  hay  is  scarce,  an  acre  or  two  of  very  rich 
land  sown  to  millet  and  cured  for  hay  may  take 
the  place  of  two  or  three  times  that  area  of  ordi- 
nary meadow.  It  may  be  the  wisest  plan  to  follow 
the  practice  of  some  dairymen  who  have  found  that 
the  easiest  way  to  grow  grain  is  to  plant  potatoes 
and  exchange  them  for  mill  feed. 

In  a  general  way  over  most  of  the  dairy  belt  of 
the  United  States,  the  business  is  founded  on  three 
great  crops,  (1)  grass  and  the  hay  legumes  (alfalfa 
and  the  clovers),  (2)  corn  to  be  harvested  mainly 
through  the  silo,  (3)  and  a  small-grain  crop,  oats, 
or  better,  a  mixture  of  oats,  barley  and  peas  sown 
together. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  largest  single 
factor  in  crop  production  is  the  weather.     There 


130  THE  COW 

ought  to  be  a  margin  of  safety  between  what  the 
live-stock  requires  and  what  the  farm  will  ordi- 
narily produce.  The  effort  to  keep  all  the  cattle 
that  the  farm  can  maintain  in  ordinarily  produc- 
tive years  will  be  sure  to  meet  with  lean  years  when 
our  plans  go  wrong.  It  will  be  well  to  carry  over 
from  year  to  year  some  reserve  of  hay  and  not 
to  keep  so  much  stock  that  choice  timothy  hay 
cannot  be  sold,  for  its  sale  value  is  always  far 
above  its  feeding  worth. 

The  choice  of  a  farm  is  exceedingly  important 
and  many  factors  must  be  considered.  Some  of 
these  are  as  follows: 

The  soil:  Is  it  fertile?  Has  it  natural  sup« 
plies  of  lime  sui!icient  to  make  it  easy  to  grow 
legumes,  especially  clovers  and  alfalfa?  Has  it 
the  physical  characters  that  adapt  it  to  the  true 
grasses?  Does  it  need  artificial  drainage?  Is  it 
free  from  large  stone  so  as  to  permit  the  use  of 
modern  tillage  implements?  Is  there  at  least  a 
part  of  it  where  the  corn  plant  will  be  at  home? 

Topography :  How  much  of  the  land  is  level 
enough  to  permit  the  use  of  the  tractor  and  other 
heavy  implements  and  to  allow  inter-cultural  til- 
lage without  washing  and  denuding?  Does  it  slope 
south  and  east  or  does  it  face  north  and  west? 
The  difference  in  the  two  exposures  is  very  impor- 
tant. Does  the  tillable  land  where  we  expect  to 
grow  corn  enjoy  good  air  drainage  so  that  there 
will  not  be  frosty  pockets?    This  may  not  be  vital 


THE  DAIRY  FARMSTEAD  131 

in  the  South  but  it  is  important  as  we  approach 
the  northern  limit  of  the  corn-belt.  What  is  the 
position  of  the  buildings?  Are  there  favorable 
grades  for  roads  to  bring  the  crops  to  the  barn  and, 
not  less  important,  return  the  manure  to  the  fields? 
Is  the  farm  cut  up  with  ravines  or  streams  that 
will  interfere  with  broad  fields  and  long  straight 
furrows?  Is  it  possible  to  reach  remote  parts  of 
the  farm  by  direct  routes?  Is  the  house  and  barn 
sheltered  from  winter  gales? 

Climate:  What  is  the  annual  rainfall  of  the 
locality?  How  is  it  distributed  as  to  the  seasons  of 
the  year?  What  is  the  date  of  the  last  frost  in 
spring  and  the  first  frost  in  the  fall?  What  is  the 
mean  annual  temperature? 

Location,  markets,  transportation:  Is  the  farm 
near  good  permanent  stone  highways?  Is  it  near, 
if  possible,  yevj  near,  the  markets  where  the  dairy 
products  are  to  be  marketed?  Is  it  near  the  sta- 
tion from  which  feed  supplies  must  be  hauled? 
Are  the  market  roads  level  enough  so  that  maxi- 
mum loads  may  be  taken? 

Water  supply:  Has  the  farm  a  satisfactory 
water  supply  in  the  pastures  as  well  as  at  the  house 
and  barn?  If  not,  is  it  possible  to  secure  an  abun- 
dant supply  of  pure  running  water  at  reasonable 
expense?  Are  there  springs  or  unfailing  streams 
in  the  pastures?  We  cannot  lay  too  much  emphasis 
on  this. 

Social  and  human  factors:    Are  the  neighbors 


132  THE  COW 

of  the  type  and  nationality  that  we  wish  our  chil- 
dren to  grow  up  among?  Is  there  a  good  school? 
Is  there  a  live  church?  Is  there  a  community 
conscience  and  consciousness?  Is  there  a  good 
sized  village  or  small  city  within  easy  driving  dis- 
tance by  automobile?  These  may  be  intangible 
factors  not  easily  translated  into  terms  of  dollars, 
but  we  cannot  afford  to  ignore  them.  A  man  who 
buys  a  farm  chooses  a  home  not  only  for  himself 
but,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  for  his  descendants  as  well. 
Broad  and  smiling  acres  and  barns  that  burst  with 
crops  avail  little  if  the  human  conditions  are 
wrong. 

A  man  must  choose  a  farm  not  only  as  a  place 
where  cows  may  be  maintained  and  milk  cheaply 
produced  and  advantageously  marketed  but  also 
as  a  place  where  he  may  help  rear  a  worthy  agri- 
cultural civilization  and  found  an  enduring  and 
contented  family  life. 


XIV 

THE  CONSTRUCTION  OF  THE  DAIRY  BARN 

We  may  have  a  herd  of  excellent  cattle  and  a 
good  farm  but  if  the  barns  are  inconvenient  or 
poorly  adapted  to  their  purpose,  the  entire  business 
will  be  unsatisfactory  and  perhaps  unprofitable. 
Satisfactory  barns  are  rarely  made  in  an  archi- 
tect's office.  They  grow  under  the  hand  of  the  man 
who  really  knows  the  routine  of  harvesting  crops 
and  caring  for  cows.  The  country,  especially  near 
large  cities,  is  full  of  so-called  model  farms  with 
very  expensive  and  sometimes  very  artistic  barns, 
but  most  of  them  are  models  only  of  how  barns 
ought  not  to  be  constructed.  Under  the  most 
favorable  conditions,  doing  the  chores  calls  for  a 
rather  appalling  expenditure  of  time  and  energy, 
but  a  poorly  planned  barn  and  stable  may  easily 
double  the  labor.  It  should  be  said  in  passing  that 
farming  is  about  the  only  business  in  the  world 
at  which  rich  men  deliberately  play  without  pre- 
tension that  there  should  be  a  connection  between 
income  and  outgo.  Many  of  these  model  bams 
load  every  cow  with  an  overhead  charge  for  her 
shelter  which,  if  really  charged  against  the  busi- 

133 


134  THE  COW 

ness,  would  effectually  dispose  of  any  possibility 
of  profit. 

As  for  the  cow  herself,  her  esthetic  sense  is  en- 
tirely undeveloped.  Some  few  fundamental  condi- 
tions she  enjoys  and  her  welfare  demands  that  as 
far  as  possible  these  should  be  supplied.  Her 
stable  should  be  well  lighted,  well  ventilated, 
reasonably  warm  and  the  stall  should  be  bedded 
and  so  arranged  that  she  may  stand  or  lie  with 
comfort.  But  she  cannot  appreciate  the  sanitary 
gleam  of  white  tile  nor  the  elegance  of  nickeled 
stall  fittings.  Concrete  floors  and  foundation,  and 
hemlock  construction  above  suit  her  perfectly. 

If  a  man  is  making  plenty  of  money  in  some 
other  business  and  spending  it  on  a  farm,  there  is 
nothing  to  forbid  him  erecting  a  barn  ornate 
enough  to  gratify  his  heart's  desire.  There  are 
also  some  breeders  handling  valuable  herds  who 
have  many  visitors  and  purchasers  and  beautiful 
and  expensive  stables  may  have  an  advertising 
value  that  justifies  the  cost.  However,  dairying  as 
a  whole  is  a  severely  utilitarian  business  where 
the  margin  of  profit  is  small.  The  barn  and  stables 
at  best  are  large  and  important  items  of  capital 
expenditure  and  the  business  demands  as  low  cost 
as  is  consistent  with  convenience  and  the  comfort 
and  hygienic  welfare  of  the  occupants.  It  should 
be  noted  that  the  convenience  of  the  barn  and  the 
welfare  of  the  cattle  do  not  necessarily  go  together. 
There  are  barns  in  which  it  is  easy  to  feed  and  care 


THE  DAIRY  BAEN  135 

for  the  cows  but  where  not  enough  attention  has 
been  paid  to  ventilation,  lighting  and  comfortable 
stalls.  More  commonly,  especially  in  the  preten- 
tious barn,  the  welfare  of  the  cattle  has  been  looked 
after,  but  that  of  the  herdsman  forgotten.  One 
finds  hay  dragged  long  distances  by  the  forkful 
through  narrow  alleys,  silage  earned  in  baskets 
from  remote  corners  and  manure  laboriously  re- 
moved by  wheelbarrows. 

A  fairly  standard  type  of  dairy  barn  construc- 
tion has  now  been  evolved.  It  is  a  building  from 
thirty-two  to  thirty-six  feet  wide  and  as  long  as 
necessary  to  house  the  desired  number  of  cattle. 
The  cows  stand  in  stanchions  in  two  parallel 
rows  facing  outward  toward  the  air  and  light  and 
feeding  alleys  and  there  will  be  a  driveway  through 
the  center  behind  them  through  which  a  wagon  may 
be  driven  or  a  carrier  rolled  for  the  removal  of  the 
manure.  These  general  dimensions  are  correct. 
A  barn  narrower  than  this  will  be  crowded  and  if 
wider  it  will  be  poor  economy  of  space. 

The  arrangement  of  floor  plan  just  indicated 
will  be  best  in  most  cases.  However,  under  the 
rather  unusual  circumstances  when  it  is  expected 
that  the  cows  will  rely  mainly  on  green  soiling 
crops  fed  in  the  stables,  it  may  be  wiser  to  reverse 
the  position  of  the  cows  and  have  them  stand 
facing  each  other  so  that  loads  of  forage  may  be 
driven  through  the  central  feeding  alley  and 
pitched  directly  into  the  mangers.     It  must  be 


136  THE  COW 

repeated,  however,  that  this  arrangement  is  not 
good  so  far  as  light,  ventilation  and  clean  stable 
walls  are  concerned,  and  if  employed  at  all  it  must 
be  in  cases  in  which  soiling  is  to  be  a  very  impor- 
tant part  of  farm  practice.  Outside  of  these  rather 
fixed  dimensions  and  somewhat  fundamental  plans, 
the  details  may  vary  to  suit  the  wishes  or  special 
needs  of  the  owner,  but  never  under  any  circum- 
stances forgetting  the  convenience  in  following  the 
routine  of  caring  for  the  herd. 

A  great  variety  of  methods  and  devices  for  stalls 
for  the  cattle  has  been  advised  and  patented  and 
used  to  some  extent,  but  practically  all  experienced 
herdsmen  now  agree  that  some  form  of  swinging 
iron  stanchion  is  the  best  solution  of  the  problem. 
These  stanchions  should  be  hung  with  a  short  chain 
at  top  and  bottom  so  as  to  allow  the  cow  a  certain 
degree  of  freedom  and  liberty  of  movement.  Each 
cow  will  need  floor  space  from  thirty-six  to  forty- 
two  inches  in  width  and  there  should  be  about  four 
and  one-half  feet  from  the  manger  to  the  gutter 
or  drop,  varying  with  the  size  of  the  cow.  Various 
firms  are  engaged  in  the  business  of  supplying 
fittings  for  cow  stables  and  these  carry  a  very  ex- 
tensive line  comprising  almost  everything  that  can 
be  suggested.  Such  manufacturers  are  glad  to 
furnish  detailed  plans  and  to  make  estimates  of 
cost. 

Stables,  even  when  rigid  economy  is  sought, 
should  be  constructed  with  manger,  gutters  and 


THE  DAIRY  BARN  137 

floors  of  concrete  on  the  score  of  permanency,  sani- 
tation and  even  of  first  cost.  There  are  many 
places  about  the  stable  where  wood  is  short-lived 
and  unsatisfactory  at  best. 

In  addition  to  the  regular  stabling  for  the  milk- 
ing herd,  a  liberal  number  of  box-stalls  should  be 
provided  that  may  be  used  as  quarters  for  cows 
about  to  drop  calves  or  for  exceptionally  good 
animals  to  which  it  is  desired  to  give  special  atten- 
tion. These  stalls  may  also  be  utilized  as  calf  pens. 
Such  stalls  and  pens  may  be  inexpensively  con- 
structed of  wood,  or,  if  means  permit,  they  may 
be  purchased  ready  to  erect  from  dealers.  Iron 
box-stalls  are  rather  high  in  first  cost,  but  they 
have  many  advantages  in  the  way  of  neatness  and 
durability. 

Hay-mows  should  be  provided  above  the  stable 
and  the  hay  dropped  down  through  chutes  directly 
into  the  feeding  alleys.  Most  professional  archi- 
tects and  sanitarians  will  not  approve  of  this  ar- 
rangement, but  any  one  who  has  really  served  his 
apprenticeship  around  a  bam  will  understand  the 
simplicity  and  labor-saving  advantages  of  the 
plan.  Moreover,  the  objections  are  on  the  whole 
theoretical. 

Light  should  be  provided  in  abundance,  the  only 
limit  being  that  in  cold  weather  a  single  thickness 
of  glass  allows  heat  to  be  lost  very  rapidly  and,  as 
will  be  emphasized  later,  this  is  serious  in  severe 
climates. 


138  THE  COW 

The  best  ventilation  will  be  secured  by  a  system 
of  intake  and  outtake  air  flues,  the  latter  extending 
from  a  point  near  the  floor  and  carried  up  through 
the  upper  stories  to  a  point  well  above  the  ridge 
of  th^  roof.  This  general  plan  has  been  rather 
widely  popularized  under  the  name  of  the  "King 
system."  It  should  be  said  that  the  system  is 
rather  expensive  to  install.  Like  fire-place  chim- 
neys, they  have  sometimes  failed  to  act  as  expected, 
the  draught  being  in  the  wrong  direction.  An- 
other plan  very  widely  used  on  account  of  sim- 
plicity and  low  first  cost  is  merely  to  replace  some 
of  the  windows  with  ordinary  cotton  muslin.  This 
admits  some  light  and  also  allows  the  air  to  filter 
slowly  through  while  avoiding  strong  direct 
draughts. 

If  possible,  a  stable  should  be  built  warm  enough 
so  that  it  will  never  freeze  even  in  the  coldest 
weather.  This  is  not  entirely  on  account  of  the  cow 
herself,  because  she  is  a  native  of  rather  cold 
climates  and  is  probably  less  sensitive  to  low  tem- 
peratures than  we  sometimes  think.  However,  no 
item  of  stable  comfort  is  more  important  than 
individual  water  basins  for  each  cow  so  that  she 
may  help  herself  at  any  time  of  day  or  night ;  but 
this  very  desirable  arrangement  is  forbidden  unless 
the  stable  is  entirely  frostless.  Freezing  once  or 
twice  during  the  winter  will  ruin  the  whole  system 
by  bursting  pipes  and  water  basins.  A  stable  must 
be  very  warmly  constructed  to  remain  above  freez- 


THE  DAIRY  BAEN  139 

ing  during  a  midwinter  night  when  it  is  twenty 
below  zero  outside  and  a  howling  gale  driving  in 
its  frigid  blast  at  every  crack  and  nail-hole.  The 
side  walls  must  be  double  with  a  good  dead  air 
space,  or  better  yet,  a  chaff  or  saw-dust  packing, 
and  over  head  there  should  be  a  hay-mow.  In  ad- 
dition, the  ceiling  should  be  fairly  low  and  the 
stable  filled  with  cows.  The  writer,  living  on  the 
high  lands  of  the  central  New  York  plateau  with 
a  rather  iron-clad  winter  climate,  realizes  how 
much  care  is  necessary  to  secure  a  stable  in  which 
water  buckets  may  be  installed  with  safety. 

Always  in  planning  a  barn  there  will  be  many 
details  to  consider.  Silage  is  heavy  and  must  be 
handled  in  large  quantities.  Therefore,  it  is  of 
prime  importance  to  have  the  .silos  so  located  that 
the  contents  will  be  thrown  out  as  near  as  possible 
to  the  feeding  mangers. 

Very  often  it  will  be  wisest  to  have  the  barn 
built  in  the  T  or  L  form,  the  main  part  containing 
the  lines  of  stanchions  for  the  milking  herd,  while 
the  wing  may  be  devoted  to  .box-stalls  and  calf 
pens  and  perhaps  with  quarters  for  horses.  How- 
ever, city  milk  inspectors  do  not  approve  of  the 
very  convenient  feature  of  having  the  farm  teams 
close  to  the  cows. 

When  the  slope  of  the  land  permits,  the  "over 
shot"  type  of  barn  with  the  main  drive-way  on  the 
second  story  has  many  advantages.  The  barn  of 
the  writer  has  the  rather  unusual  feature  of  the 


140'  THE  COW 

drive-way  on  the  third  story,  but  this  construction 
is  not  usually  practical  unless  a  fairly  steep  hill- 
side is  available  to  help  gain  entrance.  As  far  as 
possible  the  mows  should  be  kept  clear  of  all  cross 
timbers  that  interfere  with  the  free  use  of  grappel 
horse-forks  or  slings  in  unloading  hay  or  un- 
threshed  grain. 

The  so-called  "gambreF'  or  "hip"  roof  gives 
much  more  overhead  storage  room  than  the  usual 
gable  type  and  at  a  relatively  small  increased  cost. 
Even  when  economy  is  very  necessary,  a  first-class 
metal  roof  or  perhaps  even  better,  a  slate  roof,  will 
be  cheapest  in  the  end.  It  may  be  added  that  a 
system  of  lightning-rods  properly  installed  ought 
to  enable  the  dairyman  to  rest  better  during 
thunder-showers. 


XV 

CONCERNING  DAIRYING  AS  A  BUSINESS 

The  writer  lives  on  an  old  farm  in  the  Hill-Coun- 
try of  eastern  New  York  just  where  the  western 
foothills  of  the  Catskills  merge  themselves  with  the 
central  New  York  plateau.  We  have  been  farm- 
ers on  this  land  since  1800.  It  is  a  farm  that, 
judged  by  corn-belt  standards,  is  too  hilly  and 
stone-strewn  for  easy  or  successful  farming.  It  is 
a  farm  where  the  side-hill  plow  will  always  find 
a  place  and  there  are  many  fields  from  which  the 
tractor  and  hay -loader  will  be  forever  barred.  But 
the  hills  are  good  hills  nevertheless,  great  furrows 
from  the  glacial  plow,  and  the  bowlder-clay  and 
limestone  drift  of  which  they  are  composed  make 
a  soil  where  grass  and  alfalfa  and  oats  are  much 
at  home.  The  farm  lies  high  above  sea  level  and 
we  do  not  grow  corn  as  easily  as  if  we  were  a 
thousand  feet  lower  or  a  few  hundred  miles  further 
south.  More  and  more  with  the  years  we  and  all 
our  neighbors  are  discovering  that  we  belong  in 
the  dairy  belt  and  that  our  best  agricultural  oppor- 
tunity lies  in  the  keeping  of  cows.  From  earliest 
boyhood  my  farm  activities  have  been  linked  with 

141 


142  THE  COW 

the  daily  herd.  The  daily  yield  of  cream  consti- 
tutes the  means  by  which  we  live,  so  I  have  in  mind 
to  set  down  very  briefly  my  philosoph}^,  my  stead- 
fast faith,  concerning  the  business  of  cow-keeping. 

Let  it  be  said  first  that  dairying  is  surely  no 
sluggard's  job.  In  all  the  devious  ways  by  land 
or  sea,  in  shop  or  mart  or  roaring  city  canyon  by 
which  men  gain  a  livelihood,  there  is  none  other 
occupation  so  insistent,  so  exacting  in  its  demands. 
Like  Tennyson's  brook,  it  goes  on  forever.  There 
is  something  almost  appalling  or  pitiful  in  its 
unending  routine.  I  remember  how  my  good  father, 
noting  this  fact,  used  to  quote,  half  humorously, 
half  seriously,  the  phrase  of  Solomon  the  Wise, 
"For  there  is  no  discharge  in  this  war.''  It  is 
almost  as  regular  and  unchanging  as  the  Proces- 
sion of  the  Equinoxes.  Come  what  may,  though 
the  heavens  fall,  the  cow  demands  her  usual  atten- 
tion. The  day  that  the  master  of  the  farm  dies, 
she  must  be  fed  and  milked.  On  the  great  day 
when  the  daughter  of  the  home  is  given  in  mar- 
riage, there  can  be  no  deviation.  The  fruit-grower 
or  the  crop  farmer  may  labor  hard  but  on  Saturday 
night  he  may  forget  his  task  till  Monday  dawn. 
There  are  many  dairy  farms  where  the  irreducible 
minimum  of  Sunday  chores  will  constitute  more 
than  the  eight-hour  day  which  union  labor  insists 
leaves  not  enough  time  for  rest  and  play.  We 
cherish  a  family  tradition  that  for  more  than  a 
century  there  has  never  been  a  night  when  in  our 


DAIRYING  AS  A  BUSINESS  143 

house  there  was  not  a  fire  on  the  hearth  and  a 
light  in  the  window,  but  the  reason  is  that  the 
exigencies  of  our  business  were  such  that  never 
under  any  circumstances  could  the  plant  close 
down. 

Dairying  is  in  no  way  a  get-rich-quick  proposi- 
tion. There  are  certain  types  of  farming,  like  fruit- 
growing and  vegetable-gardening,  in  which  the 
possible  value  of  production  to  the  acre  is  very 
large  and  where  a  fortunate  conjunction  of  good 
yields  and  high  prices  sometimes  give  the  farmer 
returns  that  constitute  the  financial  romance  of 
agriculture.  For  example,  it  is  possible  to  find  in- 
stances in  which  peaches  or  onions  or  strawberries 
or  lettuce  have  given  gross  returns  of  more  than  a 
thousand  dollars  from  single  acres.  Nothing  of 
this  nature  can  ever  come  about  from  the  sale  of 
dairy  products.  Intelligently  and  industriously 
followed,  the  business  ought  generally  to  yield  a 
profit,  but  the  margin  above  cost  of  production  will 
never  be  very  large.  The  breeding  of  registered 
cattle  and  the  exploitation  of  the  pure-bred  busi- 
ness is  very  different.  This  calls  for  judgment  and 
skill  of  a  very  high  order  together  with  a  certain 
gift  of  salesmanship  and  a  full  appreciation  of  the 
value  of  publicity.  Some  few  men  of  great  energy 
and  special  ability  have  made  money  very  rapidly 
in  this  field.  Selling  market  milk  or  butter  or 
cheese  will  never  afford  a  foundation  for  any  agri- 
cultural wonder-tales. 


144  THE  COW 

Another  weakness  of  the  milk  business  from  a 
commercial  standpoint  is  the  fact  that  the  product 
must  be  sold  as  rapidly  as  produced  and  that  once 
production  is  under  way  it  cannot  be  arrested 
quickly  to  conform  to  the  demands  of  a  falling 
market.  By  aid  of  cold  storage,  butter  and  cheese 
and  other  milk  products  may  be  held  for  some 
months  in  good  condition,  but  market  milk  must 
find  its  final  market  within  twenty-four  hours  of 
its  production.  Save  in  a  few  special  cases,  the 
dairyman  has  ceased  to  be  a  manufacturer  and 
has  become  merely  a  producer  of  raw  materials. 
While  theoretically  at  least  the  very  perishable 
nature  of  his  product  has  left  the  dairyman  at  the 
mercy  of  the  dealer  and  manufacturer,  yet  as  a 
matter  of  fact  the  demoralization  of  the  milk  mar- 
ket never  approaches  that  sometimes  experienced 
in  fruits  and  truck. 

One  of  the  advantages  of  the  dairy  business  is 
its  stability.  The  dairyman  is  never  caught  up  to 
new  and  undreamed-of  heights  of  prosperity.  It 
is  probable  that  through  a  series  of  years  no 
other  agricultural  product  shows  a  curve  of  prices 
so  regular  or  so  closely  estimated  in  advance.  The 
rise  and  fall  of  dairy  prices,  with  certain  minor 
variations,  is  almost  as  regular  as  the  seasons. 
Always  the  lowest  prices  of  the  year  come  in  April, 
May  and  June,  then  start  to  advance  and  reach 
the  peak  in  November  and  then  begin  an  orderly 
decline  to  the  low  point  again  in  April.    Xo  man 


DAIRYING  AS  A  BUSINESS  145 

can  possibly  make  even  an  intelligent  guess  as  to 
the  price  of  potatoes  or  apples  or  cabbage  or  onions 
a  year  from  now,  but  we  are  fairly  safe  in  saying 
that  the  price  of  dairy  products  will  not  vary 
greatly  from  the  average  of  past  seasons  or  from 
the  general  average  price  level  of  all  commodities. 
This  enables  the  dairyman  to  plan  for  the  future 
with  an  assurance  that  is  hardly  allowed  in  other 
farm  business.  Even  in  the  midst  of  industrial 
panics  and  crumbling  prices  such  as  has  come  to 
us  in  the  wake  of  the  Great  War,  his  products  have 
exhibited  relative  price  stability. 

There  is  a  certain  element  of  safety  and  security 
in  our  business.  The  dairy  specialist  may  produce 
only  one  product,  but  he  is  surely  not  a  one-crop 
farmer.  Surplus  supplies  of  hay  are  readily  car- 
ried over  from  one  year  to  another  and  almost 
never  do  we  have  a  failure  of  all  the  crops  of  the 
dairy  farm. 

The  greatest  argument  for  the  business  of  cow- 
keeping  is  that  above  any  other  type  of  agriculture 
it  makes  for  soil  enrichment.  In  America  we  have 
developed  a  remarkable  agriculture  and  have  made 
our  typical  farmer  efficient  beyond  any  other  in 
the  world.  No  other  tiller  of  the  soil  anywhere 
produces  as  much  food  to  a  man  (not  to  the  acre) 
as  does  the  American  husbandman.  We  have  also 
succeeded  in  wringing  wealth  from  the  soil  as  the 
development  and  resources  of  the  agricultural 
states  attest.     However,  we  have  not  yet  demon- 


146  THE  COW 

strated  that  our  kind  of  agriculture  can  endure 
through  many  centuries.  The  good  dairyman  need 
have  no  doubts  or  misgivings  on  that  score.  If  he 
carefully  conserves  all  the  manure  and  puts  it  on 
the  fields  and  supplements  his  home-grown  rough- 
age with  purchased  concentrates,  he  may  go  for- 
ward in  the  calm  assurance  that  where  he  keeps 
cows  today  he  may  keep  still  more  cows  in  days  to 
come.  He  will  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing 
that  he  will  ''leave  the  soil  better  than  he  found  it" 
and  he  will  be  able  to  hand  down  to  his  children 
an  ever  richer  heritage. 

There  remains  at  least  one  more  consideration 
and  it  is  a  rather  intangible  one.  Somehow  or 
other  it  cannot  be  gainsaid  that  dairying  makes 
for  agricultural  and  community  stability.  Farm 
tenantry  is  in  many  of  its  aspects  unfortunate  and 
a  menace  to  our  ideal  country-side  development. 
The  typical  tenant  has  no  real  abiding  place  and 
he  makes  a  crop  and  then  moves  on,  seeking  new 
fields  of  adventure.  When  a  man  acquires  flocks 
and  herds,  he  begins  to  strike  root  in  the  soil. 

The  relative  permanency  of  dairying,  the  all-the- 
year-round  character  of  the  industry,  the  regularity 
of  it,  the  high  intelligence  which  it  demands  and 
the  increasing  value  and  productivity  of  dairy 
farms  are  all  factors  that  give  special  dairy  com- 
munities the  best  developments  of  our  rural  life. 


DAIRYING  AS  A  BUSINESS  147 

It  is  mid-July.  Once  again  we  are  making  the 
hay  on  Hillside  Farm.  In  the  matter  of  hay,  it  is  a 
fat  year.  I  hardly  know  where  we  shall  store  the 
first  crop,  to  say  nothing  of  the  aftermath.  It  is 
only  twenty-seven  years  ago  that  we  built  what  we 
still  call  the  "new  barn."  At  first  it  used  to  hold  all 
our  crops  with  room  to  spare,  but  it  does  so  no 
longer.  Any  farm  fully  stocked  with  cows  where 
much  grain  is  purchased  and  where  all  the  manure 
is  carefully  saved  and  wisely  used,  grows  ever  more 
productive.  I  suppose  we  have  doubled  crop  pro- 
duction since  my  father's  youth. 

I  look  out  across  a  meadow  where  there  seems 
hardly  room  for  the  windrows  to  lie.  Over  there 
a  half  mile  is  the  steep  rough  hill-pasture, — our 
"mountain."  I  can  see  the  herd  as  the  animals 
work  back  and  forth  across  it, — blurs  of  yellow 
and  white  on  the  brown-green  background.  Above 
the  upper  line  of  the  pasture  the  woods  begin  and 
run  to  the  top,  green  and  deep,  wonderfully  cool 
and  refreshing  to  the  eye.  I  can  remember  very 
clearly  when  I  was  sure  that  this  horizon  was  the 
very  place  where  the  sky  came  down. 

It  is  hot  and  bright  today.  I  can  hear  the 
clattering  song  of  the  mower  on  my  neighbor's 
farm.  I  can  hear  the  shouts  of  our  own  men  as 
they  urge  the  straining  horses  to  drag  the  heavy 
hayloader  up  the  grades.  Every  little  while — two  or 
three  times  an  hour  when  things  are  going  well — 
a  swaying  load  of  hay  comes  up  the  lane  and  is 


148  THE  COW 

swallowed  up  within  the  barn.  I  am  mowing  it 
away.  It  is  hot  up  here  under  the  roof,  as  hot 
perhaps  as  in  the  steel  furnaces  where  it  is  the 
fashion  to  pity  the  men  who  toil.  It  takes  only  a 
few  moments  to  unload  hay  by  modern  methods, 
but  it  means  dust  and  sweat  and  weariness. 

So  I  am  moved  to  a  hay-mow  meditation.  Some- 
times our  business  seems  a  curiously  futile  per- 
formance, like  traveling  always  in  a  circle.  All 
the  growing  season  from  April  to  November  we 
toil  to  grow  and  gather  the  crops  that  shall  fill 
the  great  barns  and  silos.  And  then  all  the  re- 
mainder of  the  year  we  devote  to  feeding  out  the 
crops  we  have  gathered  with  such  pains,  and  when 
spring  comes  we  have  always  what  we  had  the 
year  before, — an  empty  bam.  And  always  in  fair 
weather  and  foul  we  milk  the  cows.  Does  it  not 
seem  a  bootless  task?  Sometimes  perhaps  I  ask 
myself  this  question.  Yet  I  remember :  Take  care 
of  the  soil  and  the  soil  will  take  care  of  you.  For 
a  hundred  years  and  more  my  people  have  worked 
for  this  old  hill  farm,  and  have  lived  by  it  and  on 
the  whole  it  has  answered  to  their  care.  A  hundred 
years  ago  it  sent  a  boy  to  college  and  it  is  sending 
boys  and  girls  to  college  still.  Of  the  by-gone  men 
who  tilled  it,  none  ate  the  bread  of  idleness  and 
none  has  known  want.  I  like  to  remember  that 
out  of  its  soil  for  all  those  years  has  been  nourished 
a  wholesome  civilization  and  a  generous  life. 


INDEX 

Age  of  cows   107 

American  Indians,  agriculture  of   . 45 

pioneer  and  his  ox  team 24 

Ayrshire  cattle   i 79 

Bakewell,  Thomas 12,  173 

Barns,  construction  of 133 

ornate  type  not  desirable 133 

standard  dairy  type 135 

Beef  cattle 80 

Bos  indicus  > 23 

taurus 1.9,  22 

Bot-fly ., , 91 

Breeds,  selection  of , 80 

Bulls,  vicious 14 

Calf,  barn  feeding  of  during  first  summer 86 

birth  of 16 

care  of  by  its  mother , 20 

feeding  of  the 84 

instincts  of ,. 18 

mother  love  for 17 

pens,  construction  of  137 

scours   99 

teaching  it  to  drink  from  a  pail 18 

Calling  cry  for  cows  2 

Calves,  number  to  be  reared  112 

Catskill  Mountains    141 

Cattle,  breeds  of 74,  78 

Cave  man  and  his  cow 21,  23 

Cherry  Valley  massacre   46 

149 


150  INDEX 

Climate  desirable  for  the  dairy  farm 131 

Coffee  cow  47 

Concrete,  used  in  stable  construction 137 

Conformation  as  a  measure  of  dairy  capacity 123 

Contagious  abortion  99 

Corn-belt  farmer 3 

Corn  silage 127 

Cow,  at  pasture  and  at  rest 39 

changed  by  her  environment 34 

color  and  markings   ,.  34 

domestication  of   21 

esthetic  sense  undeveloped  . 134 

general   physical  appearance    25 

intelligence  of   57 

native  country  of  10 

pastures 124 

paths 57 

ties 136 

Cud 28 

Dairy  farms 124 

Dehorning  cows 31 

Depreciation  of  dairy  herd 110 

Diseases  of  cattle   , 99 

Early  cattle  breeders 73 

Evolution  of  the  cow 10 

Farm  management  for  the  dairy  farm,  a  system  of . .  126 

Fighting  among  cows  and  bulls 37 

Fowls,  spring-time  egg-laying  16 

Free  martin 30 

Gait  of  the  cow 38 

Gambrel  roofed  bams 140 

Garget    103 

Gestation  period  in  the  cow 83 

Grades    113 

Gray's  Elegy  in  a  Country  Church  Yard 55 


INDEX  151 

Guernsey  cattle "^8 

Hambletonian  10 114 

Hay  mows •  137 

Heifers,  age  at  which  to  breed 87 

Herd-books 76,  78 

Hill  Country  1,  65,  68 

Hillside  Farm 141 

pastures    63 

Hollow  Horn    29 

Holsteins    78 

Hornless  cattle   31 

Horse,  method  of  grazing 28 

Insect  pests  of  cattle 91 

Jerseys   78 

Judging  cattle    —  116 

June  pastures   58 

Kerry  cattle    32 

Kingdom  of  the  cow 8 

Lice  on  cattle 92 

Lighting  of  cow  stables ^ 137 

Markets,  influence  on  dairying 7 

outlets  for  milk 96 

Milk  fever  101 

veins 122 

Milking   machines    98 

Modern  barn  methods   48 

Napoleon's  dictum 120 

Negroes  as  dairymen  5 

New  York  state,  dairy  importance 49 

Old  agricultural  East 65 

houses 65 

orchards   63 

stone  walls    66^ 

time  dairy  ideas 47' 

wall  layer 69 


152  INDEX 

"Over  shot"  barn  plan 139 

Parturient  apoplexy  101 

Parturition  of  the  cow 82 

Pastures 50 

ancient  and  modern  times 43 

decline  of 57 

treatment  of    54 

Permanency  of  the  dairy  business 146 

Polled  breeds    31 

Potash,  dehorning  calves  with 32 

Primitive  cow   9,  11,  12 

Psychology  of  the  cow 40 

Pure-bred  cattle 143 

Quack  cow  doctor 29 

Queen  bee,  number  of  eggs  laid  by 36 

Racial  stocks,  influence  on  dairying 6 

Rations,  compounding  93 

Regions  adapted  to  dairying 49 

Renewal  of  the  dairy  herd 107,  110 

Scale  of  points  in  judging  cows 118,  119 

Sheep,  domestication  of  13,  15 

She  wolf  of  Remus  and  Romulus 25 

Shetland  pony 72 

Sluggard's  job    142 

Summer  versus  winter  dairying 95 

Social  and  human  factors  on  the  dairy  farm 131 

Soil  conservation    145 

desirable  for  dairy  farm 130 

Soiling  cattle    57 

Spring-time  birth  of  young 15 

Stability  of  dairy  business 144 

Stoke  Pogis  3rd  144 

Swine,  breeds  of 74 

Taming  as  distinguished  from  domestication 22 

Teeth  of  cows  109 


INDEX  163 

Temperature  of  cow  stables 90,  138 

Toilet  of  cows 31 

Topography  of  a  good  dairy  farm 130 

Tuberculosis  in  cows 102 

Twins  and  multiple  births 30 

Udder  in  cows,  sheep,  horse  and  pig 30 

Water  buckets  in  stable   138 

supply  for  cows 93,  131 

Wedge  shape  in  cows 118 

Weights  of  cattle  32 

Wild  cow  of  Europe 10 

Winter  dairying   95 

Wolf-in-the-tail  29 


nOFERTY  USMART 

N.  C.  State  CoU^ 


